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"Keransiflan and I, sitting on 
our wheelbarrow, were al- 
lowed to go on eating in peace" 



G^ (oliddliood 




ifD CJOZittany 



nne SDouc/lad &eag<x>ick. 

with iLLuattaliond by 

J^aul oc JbeALie 




(jfie Gentaxy &0. 

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Copyright, 1918, 1919, by 
The Centuey Co. 



Published, October, 1919 



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©CI.A529851 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I QuiMPER AND Bonne Maman .... 3 

II Eliane 32 

III The Fete at Ker-Eliane 41 

IV The Old House at Landerneau ... 50 
V Xante Rose 61 

VI The Demoiselles de Coatnamprun • • 72 

VII Bon Papa 88 

VIII Le Marquis de Ploeuc 93 

IX Loch-ar-Brugg 107 

X The Pardon at Folgoat 134 

XI Bonne Maman's Death 140 

XII The Journey from Brittany .... 147 



A CHILDHOOD IN 
BRITTANY 



This little sheaf of childish memories has been 
put together from many talks, in her own tongue, 
with an old French friend. The names of her 
relatives have, by her wish, been changed to other 
names, taken from their Breton properties, or 
slightly altered while preserving the character of 
the Breton original. 



A CHILDHOOD IN 
BRITTANY 

CHAPTER I 

^UIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 

I WAS born at Quimper in Brittany on the first 
of August, 1833, at four o'clock in the morn- 
ing, and I have been told that I looked about me 
resolutely and fixed a steady gaze on the people in 
the room, so that the doctor said, "She is not blind, 
at all events." 

The first thing I remember is a hideous doll to 
which I was passionately attached. It belonged 
to the child of one of the servants, and my mother, 
since I would not be parted from it, gave this 
child, to replace it, a handsome doll. It had legs 
stuffed with sawdust and a clumsily painted card- 
board head, and on this head it wore a bourrelet. 

3 



4 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

The bourrelet was a balloon-shaped cap made of 
plaited wicker, and was worn by young children 
to protect their heads when they fell. We, too, 
wore them in our infancy, and I remember that I 
was very proud when wearing mine and that I 
thought it a very pretty head-dress. 

I could not have been more than three years old 
when I was brought down to the grand salon to be 
shown to a friend of my father's, an Englishman, 
on his way to England from India, and a pink silk 
dress I then wore, and my intense satisfaction in it, 
is my next memory. It had a stiff little bodice 
and skirt, and there were pink rosettes over my 
ears. But I could not have been a pretty child, 
for my golden hair, which grew abundantly in 
later years, was then very scanty, and my mouth 
was large. I was stood upon a mahogany table, 
of which I still see the vast and polished spaces 
beneath me, and Mr. John Dobray, when I was 
introduced to him by my proud father, said, "So 
this is Sophie." 

Mr. Dobray wore knee-breeches, silk stockings, 
and a high stock. I see my father, too, very tall, 







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QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 7 

robust, and fair, with the pleasantest face. But 
my father's figure fills all my childhood. I was 
his pet and darling. When I cried and was 
naughty, my mother would say: "Take your 
daughter. She tires me and is insufferable." 
Then my father would take me in his arms and 
walk up and down with me while he sang me to 
sleep with old Breton songs. One of these ran : 

Jesus peguen brasve, 
Plegar douras nene; 
Jesus peguen brasve. 
Ad ondar garan te! 

This, as far as I remember, means, "May Jesus 
be happy, and may His grace make us all happy." 
At other times my father played strange, melan- 
choly old Breton tunes to me on a violin, which 
he held upright on his knee, using the bow across 
it as though it were a 'cello. He was, though un- 
taught, exceedingly musical, and played by ear on 
the clavecin anything he had heard. It must have 
been from him that I inherited my love of music, 
and I do not remember the time that I was not 
singing. 



8 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

I see myself, also, at the earliest age, held be- 
fore my father on his saddle as we rode through 
woods. He wore an easy Byronic collar and al- 
ways went bareheaded. He spent most of his 
time on horseback, visiting his farms or hunting. 

My father was of a wealthy bourgeois family 
of Landerneau, and it must have been his happy 
character and love of sport rather than his wealth 
— he was master of hounds and always kept the 
pack — that made him popular in Ouimper, for the 
gulf between the bourgeoisie and the noblesse was 
almost impassable. Yet not only was he popular, 
but he had married my mother, who was of an an- 
cient Breton family, the Rosvals. One of the 
Rosvals fought in the Combats de Trente -against 
the English, and the dying and thirsty Beau- 
manoir to whom it was said on that historic day, 
"Bois ton sang, Beaumanoir," was a cousin of 
theirs. 

My mother was a beautiful woman with black 
hair and eyes of an intense dark blue. She was 
unaware of her own loveliness, and was much 
amused one day when her little boy, after gazing 



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QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN ii 

intently at her, said, "Maman^ you are very beau- 
tiful." She repeated this remark, laughing, to my 
father, on which he said, "Yes, my dear, you are." 

My mother was extremely proud, and not at all 
flattered that she should be plain Mme. Kerou- 
guet, although she was devoted to my father and 
it was the happiest menage. I remember one day 
seeing her bring to my father, looking, for all her 
feigned brightness, a little conscious, some new vis- 
iting-cards she had had printed, with the name of 
Kerouguet reduced to a simple initial, and fol- 
lowed by several of the noble ancestral names of 
her own family. 

"What 's this*?" said my father, laughing. 

"We needed some new cards," said my mother, 
"and I dislike so much the name of Kerouguet." 

But my father, laughing more than ever, said: 

"Kerouguet you married and Kerouguet you 
must remain," and the new cards had to be relin- 
quished. 

My mother, with her black hair and blue eyes, 
had a charming nose of the sort called ''un nez 
Roxalane."' It began very straight and fine, but 



12 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

had a flattened little plateau on the tip which we 
called 'Ha promenade de mamany My memory 
of her then is of a very active, gay, authoritative 
young woman, going to balls, paying and receiving 
visits, and riding out with my father, wearing the 
sweeping habit of those days and an immense 
beaver hat and plume. 

Quimper is an old town, and the hotels of the 
noblesse^ all situated in the same quarter and on a 
steep street, were of blackened, crumbling stone. 
From portes-cocheres one entered the courtyards, 
and the gardens behind stretched far into the coun- 
try. 

In the courtyard of our hotel was a stone stair- 
case, with elaborate carvings, like those of the 
Breton churches, leading to the upper stories, but 
for use there were inner staircases. My mother's 
boudoir, the petit salon, the grand salon, the salle- 
a-manger, and the billiard-room were on the 
ground floor and gave out upon the garden. 

The high walls that ran along the street and 
surrounded the garden were concealed by planta- 
tions of trees, so that one seemed to look out into 



QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 13 

the country. Flower beds were under the salon- 
windows, and there were long borders of wild 
strawberries that had been transplanted from the 
woods, as my mother was very fond of them. 
Fruit-trees grew against the walls, and beyond the 
groves and flower beds and winding gravel paths 
was an orchard, with apricot-, pear-, and apple- 
trees, and the clear little river Odel, with its wash- 
ing-stones, where the laundry-maids beat the 
household linen in the cold, running water. 

It was pleasant to hear the clap-clap-clap on a 
hot summer day. Is it known that the pretty pied 
water- wagtail is called la lavan'diere from its love 
of water and its manner of beating up and down 
its tail as our washerwomen wield their wooden 
beaters? 

Beyond the river were the woods where I often 
rode with my father, and beyond the woods dis- 
tant ranges of mountains. I looked out at all this 
from my nursery-windows, with their frame of 
climbing-roses and heliotrope. Near my window 
was a great lime-tree of the variety known as 
American. The vanilla-like scent of its flowers 



14 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

was almost overpowering, and all this fragrance 
gave my mother a headache, and she had to have 
her room moved away from the garden to another 
part of the house. How clearly I see this room 
of my mother's, with its high, canopied four-poster 
bed and the pale-gray paper on the walls covered 
with yellow fleurs-de-lis ! 

The wall-paper in my father's room was one of 
the prettiest I have ever seen, black, all bespangled 
with bright butterflies. Of the grand salon I re- 
member most clearly the high marble mantelpiece, 
upheld by hounds sitting on their haunches. On 
this mantelpiece was a huge boule clock, two tall 
candelabra of Venetian glass, and two figures in 
vieux Saxe of a marquis and a marquise that filled 
us with delight. On each side of the fireplace 
were two Louis XV court chairs — chairs, that is, 
with only one arm, to admit of the display of the 
great hoop-skirts of the period. I remember, too, 
our special delight in the foot-stools, which were 
of mahogany, shaped rather like gondolas and 
cushioned in velvet; for we could sit inside them 
and make them rock up and down. 



QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 15 

The houses of the noblesse swarmed with serv- 
ants; many of them were married, and their chil- 
dren, and even their grandchildren, lived on with 
our family in patriarchal fashion. Men and 
maids all wore the costumes of their respective 
Breton cantons, exceedingly beautiful some of 
them, stiff with heavy embroideries, the strange 
caps of the women fluted and ruffled, adorned with 
lace, rising high above their heads and falling in 
long lappets upon their shoulders, or perched on 
their heads like butterflies. These caps were dec- 
orated with large gold pins and dangling golden 
pendants, and these and the materials for the cos- 
tumes were handed down in the peasants' families 
from generation to generation. My young nurse 
Jeannie — there was an old nurse called Gertrude 
— wore a skirt of bright-blue woolen stuff and a 
black-cloth bodice opening in a square over a net 
fichu thickly embroidered with paillettes of every 
color. Hers was the small flat cap of Quimper, 
with the odd foolscap excrescence, rather like the 
horn of a rhinoceros, curving forward over the 
forehead. Needless to say, the servants did not 



i6 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

do their daily work in this fine array; while that 
went on they were enveloped from head to foot in 
large aprons. 

The servants and the peasants in the Brittany 
of those days had a pretty custom of always using 
the thou when addressing their masters or the 
Deity, thus inverting the usual association of this 
mode of address; for to each other they said you^ 
and on their lips this was the familiar word, and 
the thou implied respect. Our servants were of 
the peasant class, but service altered and civilized 
them very much, and while no peasant spoke any- 
thing but Breton, they talked in an oddly accented 
French. I remember a pretty example of this in a 
dear old man who served my little cousin Guenole 
du Jacquelot du Bois-Laurel. Guenole and I, be- 
cause of some naughtiness, were deprived of straw- 
berries one day at our supper, and the fond old 
man, grieving over the discomfiture of his little 
master, said, or, rather chanted, half in condo- 
lence, and half in playful consolation: "Oh, le 
pauvre Guenf^le, que tu es desole I" accenting the o 
in a very droll fashion. 




"A very stately autocratic person" 



QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 19 

The servants were all under the orders of a very 
stately autocratic person, the steward or major- 
domo. It was he who directed the service from 
behind his master's chair at the head of the table 
and he who prescribed the correct costume for the 
servants. His wife had charge of Jeannie and of 
me; it was she who, when two little sisters and a 
brother had been added to the family, took us 
down to our breakfast and supervised the meal. 
We had it in a little tower-room on the ground 
floor, milk soup or gruel and the delicious bread 
and butter of Brittany. 

We lunched and dined at ten and five — such 
were the hours of those days — with our parents in 
the dining-room, and it was here that one of the 
most magnificent figures of my childhood appears ; 
for my devoted father brought me back from Paris 
one day a splendid mechanical pony, life-sized and 
with a real pony-skin, the apparatus by which he 
was moved simulating an exhilarating canter. 
Upon this steed, after dessert, we children 
mounted one by one, and we resorted to many 
ruses in order to get the first ride of the day. 



20 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

This dear pony accompanied all my childhood. 
He lost his hair as the result of an unhappy ex- 
periment we tried upon him, scrubbing him with 
hot water and soap, one day when we were unob- 
served. He had a melancholy look after that, but 
was none the less active and none the less loved. 
When I saw his dismembered body lying in the 
garret of a grand-niece not many years ago I felt a 
contraction of the heart. How he brought back 
my youth, and since that how many generations 
had ridden him I 

We played at being horses, too, driving each 
other in the garden, where we spent most of our 
days when at Quimper. Strange to say, even 
while we were thus occupied, we always wore veils 
tightly tied over our bonnets and faces to preserve 
our skins from the sun. We all wore, even in 
earliest childhood, stiff little dresses with closely 
fitting boned bodices. My sister Eliane was deli- 
cate and wore flannel next her skin ; but my only 
underclothing consisted of cambric chemise, petti- 
coats, and drawers, these last reaching to my 
ankles and terminating in frills that fell over the 



QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 21 

foot in its little sandaled shoe. When I came 
back from a wonderful stay, later on, of four or 
five years in England, a visit that revolutionized 
my ideas of life, I wore the easy dress of English 
children, and had bare arms, much to my mother's 
dismay. Another change that England wrought 
in me was that I was filled with discomfort when 
I saw the peasants kneeling before us at Loch-ar- 
Brugg, our country home; for in those days, al- 
though the Revolution had passed over France, it 
was still the custom for peasants to kneel before 
their masters, and my mother felt it right and 
proper that they should do so. I begged her not 
to allow it, but she insisted upon the ceremony to 
her dying day, and only when I came as mistress 
to Loch-ar-Brugg with my children and grandchil- 
dren was it discontinued. 

Another early memory is the long row of fam- 
ily portraits in the salle-a-manger. I think I must 
have looked up at these from my father's shoulder 
as he walked up and down with me, singing to me 
while my mother went on with her interrupted des- 
sert, for the awe that some of them inspired in me 



22 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

seems to stretch back to babyhood. Some were so 
dark and severe that it was natural they should 
frighten a baby; but it was a pastel, in flat, pale 
tones, of an old lady with high powdered hair, 
whose steady, forbidding gaze followed me up and 
down the room, that frightened me most. This 
was an elder sister of my grandmother's, a March'- 
Inder, who, dressed as a man, had fought with her 
husband and daughter in the war of the Chouans 
against the republic. Her husband was killed, 
and her daughter, taken prisoner by a French offi- 
cer, had hanged herself, so the family story ran, to 
escape insult. Another portrait of a great-grand- 
mother enchanted me then, as it has done ever 
since, a charming young woman seated, with her 
hands folded before her, her golden hair unpow- 
dered, her dress of citron-colored satin brocaded 
with bunches of pale, bright flowers. And there 
was a portrait of my grandmother in youth, with 
black hair and eyes as black as jet. I thought 
her very ugly, and could never associate her with 
my dearly loved bonne maman. 

I must delay no longer in introducing this most 



QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 23 

important member of the family, my mother's 
mother, with whom we lived, for the old Quimper 
hotel was her dower-house. 

Poor bonne maman! I see her still, in her deep 
arm-chair, always dressed in a long gown of puce- 
colored satin, a white lace mantilla, caught up 
with a small bunch of artificial buttercups, on her 
white hair. She wore white-thread lace mittens 
that reached to her elbows, and her thin, white 
hands were covered with old-fashioned rings. 
My mother was her favorite daughter, and I, as 
the eldest child of this favorite, was specially cher- 
ished. Both of bonne maman' s parents had been 
guillotined in the Revolution. I do not think her 
husband was of much comfort to her. He came 
to Quimper only for short stays. He was direc- 
teur des Fonts et chaussees for the district, but 
also a deputy in Paris, and these political duties, 
according to him, gave him no leisure for family 
life. He was at least ten years younger than 
bonne maman, very gay and witty, Vhomme du 
monde in all the acceptations of the term, full of 
deference to bonne maman, whom he treated like 



24 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

a queen, with respectful salutes and gallant kiss- 
ings of the hand. He seemed very fond of his 
home at Quimper when he was in it, but he seldom 
graced it with his presence. 

When I went up to see bonne maman in the 
morning, she would give me her thumb to kiss, an 
odd formality, since she was full of demonstra- 
tions of affection toward me. I did not find the 
salute altogether agreeable, since bonne maman 
took snuff constantly, and her delicate thumb and 
forefinger were strongly impregnated with the 
smell of tobacco. Taking me on her knees, she 
would then very gravely ask to see my little fin- 
ger, and when I held it up, she would scrutinize it 
carefully, and from its appearance tell me whether 
I had been good or naughty. Beside her chair 
bonne fnaman had always a little table, the round 
polished top surrounded by a low brass railing. 
On this were ranged a number of toilet imple- 
ments, her glasses, scent-bottle, work-bag, and va- 
rious knickknacks. A very unique implement, I 
imagine, was a little stick of polished wood, with a 
tuft of cotton wool tied by a ribbon at one end. 




"Bonne maman was devoted 
to my father ' ' 



QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 27 

This she used, when her maid had powdered her 
hair or face, to dust off the superfluous powder, 
and I can see her now, her little mirror in one 
hand, the ribboned stick in the other, turning her 
head from side to side and softly brushing the tuft 
over her brow and chin. The table was always 
carried down with her to the petit salon, where, her 
morning toilet over, she was borne in her chair by 
means of the handles that projected before and 
behind it. 

Bonne matnan had an old carriage, an old horse, 
and an old coachman. None of these was ever 
used, since she never went out except on Easter 
day, when she was carried in a sedan-chair to hear 
mass at the cathedral near by. The sedan-chair 
was gray-green with bunches of flowers painted on 
it, and upholstered with copper-colored satin. It 
was carried by four bearers in full Breton costume. 
They wore jackets of a bright light blue, beauti- 
fully embroidered along the edges with disks of 
red, gold, and black; red sashes, tied round their 
waists, hung to the knees; their full kneebreeches 
were white, their shoes black, and their stockings 



28 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

of white wool. Like all the peasants of that time, 
they wore their hair long, hanging over their 
shoulders, and their large, round Breton hats were 
of black felt tied with a thick chenille cord of red, 
blue, and black, which was held to the brim at 
one side by a golden fleur-de-lis, and that had a 
scapular dangling from the end. Within the 
chair sat my grandmother, dressed, as always, in 
puce color; but this gala costume was of brocade, 
flowers of a paler shade woven upon a dark 
ground, and the lace mantilla of every-day wear 
was replaced by a sort of white tulle head-dress, 
gathered high upon her head and falling over her 
breast and shoulders. I remember her demeanor 
in church on these great occasions, her gentle au- 
thority and receuillement, and the glance of grave 
reproach for my mother, who was occupied in look- 
ing about her and in making humorous comments 
on the odd clothes and attitude of her fellow-wor- 
shipers. On all other days the cure brought the 
communion to my grandmother in her room. I re- 
member the first of these communions that I wit- 
nessed. I was sitting on bonne maman^s bed 



QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 29 

when the cure entered, accompanied by his aco- 
lytes in red and white, and I was highly interested 
when I recognized in one of these important per- 
sonages the cook's little boy. The cure was go- 
ing to lift me from the bed, but bonne maman 
said: "No; let her stay. When you are gone I 
will explain to her the meaning of what she sees." 
This she attempted to do, but not, I imagine, with 
much success. Old Gertrude, Jeannie's chief in 
the nursery, had of course already told me of le 
petit Jesus, and I had learned to repeat, "Seigneur, 
je vous donne cceur." But bonne maman was 
grieved to find that I did not yet know "Our 
Father." 

"Sophie does not know her Pater," she said to 
my mother. "She must learn it." 

"Oh, she is too young to learn it," said my 
mother. But bonne maman was not at all satis- 
fied with this evasion and saw that the prayer was 
taught to me. She was very devout, and con- 
fessed twice a week; but more than this, she was 
the best of women. I never heard her speak ill of 
any one or saw her angry at any time, nor did I 



30 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

ever see her give way to mirth, though I remember 
a species of silent laughter that at times shook her 
thin body. 

Bonne maman was devoted to my father, even 
more devoted than to her own sons, of whom she 
had had eight. They had been so severely 
brought up by her, but especially, I feel sure, by 
my grandfather, that through exaggerated respect 
and absurd ceremony they almost trembled during 
the short audiences granted to them by their pa- 
rents. My father trembled before nobody. He 
was always cheerful, good-tempered, and kind. 
During our life at Quimper he was not much at 
home, as he had a horror of receptions and visits, 
— all the bother, as he said, of social life, — and the 
time not spent in hunting was fully occupied in 
seeing after his farms, his crops, and his peasants. 
Therefore, when he came back for a three-or-four- 
days' stay with us, it was a delight to young and 
old. I see him now, sitting in a low chair beside 
bonne maman's deep bergere, his head close to 
hers, his pipe between his teeth, — yes, his pipe — 
for bonne maman not only permitted, but even 



gUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 31 

commanded, him to smoke in her presence, so much 
did she value every moment of the time he could 
be with her. So they smiled at each other while 
they talked, — the snowy, powdered old head and 
the fair young one enveloped in the midst of 
smoke, — understanding each other perfectly ; and 
although their opinions were diametrically op- 
posed, politics was their favorite theme. They 
must have taught me their respective battle-cries, 
for I well remember that, riding my father's knee 
and listening, while he varied the gait from trot to 
gallop, I knew just when to cry out, "Vwe le RoiT' 
in order to please bonne maman, and "Vive la Re- 
publique!" to make papa laugh. When disputes 
occurred in bonne maman's room, they were be- 
tween my father and mother, if that can be called 
a dispute where one is so gay and so imperturbable. 
It was maman who brought all the heat and 
vehemence to these differences, and, strange to say, 
bonne maman always took my father's side against 
her beloved daughter. My mother's quick 
temper, I may add, displayed itself toward me 
pretty frequently in slaps and whippings, no doubt 



32 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

well deserved, for I was a naughty, wilful child; 
whereas in all my life I never received a punish- 
ment from my father. I remember his distress 
on one of these occasions and how he said, "It is 
unworthy to beat some one who cannot retaliate." 
To which my mother, flushed and indignant, re- 
plied, "It would indeed need only that." She was 
a charming and lovable woman, but I loved my 
father best. 

Bonne maman was very musical, and in the 
petit sal on ^ when she was installed there for the 
day, I heard music constantly, performed by two 
young proteges of the house. One of these was 
Mile. Ghislaine du Guesclin, the youngest descend- 
ant of our great Breton hero. It was a very poor, 
very haughty family, and extremely proud of its 
origin. Ghislaine's father, the Marquis du Gues- 
clin (for with a foolish conceit he had separated 
the particle from the name) had died, leaving his 
daughter penniless and recommending her to my 
grandfather, who placed her as dame de compagnie 
beside my mother and bonne maman. Ghislaine 
was an excellent musician, and their relation was 




' I heard music constantly" 



QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 35 

of the happiest. The other protege was called 
Yves le Grand, and was the son of bonne maman's 
coiffeur. His story was curious. As a boy of 
fourteen or fifteen he had come three times a week 
to wash the windows and doors, and while he 
worked he sang all sorts of Breton songs and 
strange airs that, as was learned later, were his 
own improvisations. Bonne maman, noticing his 
talent, had him taken to Paris by her husband, and 
he was educated in the conservatory, where, after 
ten years of admirable study, he took the second 
prize. He returned to Quimper, and earned a 
handsome livelihood by giving pianoforte lessons 
while remaining in a sense our private musician, 
for he was much attached to us all and accom- 
panied us on all our travels. Ghislaine sang 
in a ravishing fashion, and Yves accompan- 
ied her on the clavecin that stood in the petit 
salon, mingling the grave accents of his baritone 
with her clear soprano. When I first heard them 
I was almost stupefied by the experience, cuddling 
down into bonne maman's arms, my head sunk be- 
tween her cheek and shoulder, but listening with 



36 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

such absorption and with such evident apprecia- 
tion that bonne maman loved me more than ever 
for the community of taste thus revealed between 
us. 

I must often have tired her. I was a noisy, 
active child, and sometimes when I sat on her 
knee and prattled incessantly in my shrill, childish 
voice, she would pass her hand over her forehead 
and say : "Not so loud, darling; not so loud. You 
pierce my ear-drums; and you know that le hon 
Dieu has said that one must never speak without 
first turning one's tongue seven times round in 
one's mouth." At this I would gaze wide-eyed at 
bonne matnan and try involuntarily to turn my 
tongue seven times, an exercise at which I have 
never been successful. I may add in parenthesis 
that I have often regretted it. Another amusing 
adage I heard at the same time from Gertrude. If 
a child made a face, it was told to take care lest 
the wind should turn, and the face remain like 
that forever. I was much troubled by this idea 
on one occasion when maman and Ghislaine had 
been to a fancy dress ball. Ghislaine told me 



QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 37 

next day about the dances and dresses. Maman 
had danced a minuet dressed in a Pompadour 
costume, and she herself had gone as a deviless, 
with a scarlet-and-black dress and little golden 
horns in her black hair. I felt this to have been 
a very dangerous proceeding, for if le hon Dieu 
had noticed Ghislaine's travesty. He might have 
made the wind turn, and she would then have re- 
mained a deviless and been forced to live in hell 
for all eternity. 

A pretty custom at that time and in that place 
was that the young matrons who went to such 
balls and dinner-parties were expected to bring 
little silk bags in which they carried home to their 
children the left-over sweetmeats of the dessert; 
so that we children enjoyed these entertainments 
as much as Ghislaine and maman. 

Ghislaine taught me my letters from a colored 
alphabet in the petit salon., showing an angelic 
patience despite my yawns and whimperings. 
My memories of the alphabet are drolly intermin- 
gled with various objects in the petit salon that 
from the earliest age charmed my attention. One 



38 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

of these was an immense tortoise-shell mounted on 
a tripod, and another a vast Chinese umbrella of 
pale yellow satin, with silk and crystal fringes, 
that, suspended from the ceiling in front of the 
long windows that gave on the garden, was filled 
with flowers. This had been an ingenious con- 
trivance of my father's, and bonne maman found 
it as bewitching as I did, never failing to say 
to visitors, after the first greetings had passed: 
"Do you see my Chinese umbrella'?" When I 
had learned seven letters bonne maman gave me 
four red dragees de bapteme^ — the sugar-almonds 
that are scattered at christenings, — and promised 
me as many more for each new attainment. Thus 
sustained, I was able to master the alphabet and 
to pass by slow degrees to iEsop's Fables, with pic- 
tures and a yellow cover. It was later on that 
Ghislaine began to coach me in all the departe- 
nients of France and their capitals. Maman lent 
a hand in this and instituted a method that was 
singularly successful. I still laugh in remember- 
ing how at any time of the day, before guests, at 



QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 39 

meals, or while we were at play, she might sud- 
denly call out to us, "Gers I" for instance, to which 
one must instantly reply "Auch." Or else it was 
"Gironde!" and the reply, "Bordeaux," must fol- 
low without hesitation. If I replied correctly, I 
was given fifty centimes; if incorrectly, I received 
a slap. I used to dream of the departements and 
their capitals at night. One rainy day I was play- 
ing in the petit salon^ lying at full length on the 
floor and making a castle of blocks, when maman, 
coming suddenly out of the library, a great tray 
of books in her arms, cried out to me as she came, 
walking very quickly, "Garel" ["Take care I"] 
Without moving and without looking up, I replied 
obediently, "Nimes" (the capital of Gard), and 
an avalanche of books descended upon me, poor 
maman and her tray coming down with a dreadful 
clatter. Maman was not hurt, but very much 
afraid that I was. 

When she found us both, except for a few 
bruises, safe and sound, she went off into a peal of 
laughter, and I followed suit, much relieved; for 



40 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

I had imagined for one moment that I had made a 
mistake in my answer, and I found the punish- 
ment too severe. 

"You are sure I have not hurt you, darling^" 
said maman^ kissing me; and I replied with truth: 

"No, Maman; but I should have preferred the 
gifie" On that day, instead of fifty centimes, I 
received a franc for consolation. 

It was not until my brother's tutor came to us, 
when I was eight or nine years old, that I ever had 
any teacher but Ghislaine. 

Poor Ghislaine I Hers was a rather sad story. 
She had great beauty, thick, black hair, white 
skin, her small prominent nose full of distinction, 
but one strange peculiarity : there were no nails on 
her long, pointed fingers. This, while not ugly, 
startled one in noticing her hands. As I have said, ^ 
she had been left penniless, and it was difficult in 
France, then as now, to find a husband for a jeune 
fille sans dot. Ghislaine only begged that he 
should be a gentleman. But after bonne maman' s 
death, when we had gone to live in Paris, Ghis- 
laine was left behind with my aunt's family, and 



,^<f^^ 




"Ghislane taught me my letters" 



QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 43 

they finally arranged a marriage for her with a 
notary. My mother was much distressed by this 
prosaic match. She had for a time cherished the 
romantic project of a marriage between Ghislaine 
and Yves, who, besides being an artist, was the 
best of men, sincere, devoted, and delicate. 

For a descendant of du Guesclin the coiffeur's 
son would, however, have been as inappropriate as 
was the notary. The latter, too, was an excellent 
man, and Ghislaine was not unhappy with him. 



CHAPTER II 

ELIANE 

AN important event in my child life was the 
birth of my sister Eliane. I remember 
coming in from the garden one day with a little 
basket full of cockchafers that I had found, and 
running to show them to maman. She was lying 
in her large bed, with its four carved bedposts and 
high canopy, and, smiling faintly, she said: "Oh, 
no, my little girl; take them away. They will 
creep and fly over everything." I was, however, 
so much disappointed at this reception of my gift 
that tnafnan, bending from her pillows, selected 
a specially beautiful green cockchafer and said 
that that one, at all events, she would keep. 
When next morning I was told that I had a little 
sister, old Gertrude, in answer to my eager, aston- 
ished questions, informed me that it was the cock- 
chafer who, fed on milk, had become very large 

44 



ELIANE 45 

during the night and had given birth to a baby- 
cockchafer, which it had presented to my mother. 
This story of the cockchafer became a family jest, 
and later on, after my mother had had four chil- 
dren, I remembered that when cockchafers were 
referred to she would laugh and say: "No! no! 
No more cockchafers for me, if you please! I 
have had enough of their gifts." 

The story, which was repeated to me on the 
occasion of each subsequent birth, made a rather 
painful impression upon me. I did not like the 
idea of the baby cockchafer. Nor did I like my 
little sister Eliane into whom the cockchafer had 
grown. Maman remained in bed for a long time 
and paid no more attention to me, and I was 
deeply jealous, I was no longer allowed to go in 
and out of her room as had been my wont, and 
when my father took me in his arms and carried 
me gently in to see my little sister, and bent with 
me over the small pink cradle so that I might give 
her a kiss, I felt instead a violent wish to bite her. 
One day I was authorized to rock Eliane while my 
father and mother talked together. I was much 



46 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

pleased by this mark of confidence, and I slipped 
into the cradle, unnoticed, my horrible doll Jose- 
phine, all untidy and disheveled, not to say dirty, 
so that she, too, might have a rocking. She lay 
cheek to cheek with Eliane, already a young lady 
ten days old, and the contact of this cold, clammy 
cheek woke my little sister, who began to cry so 
loudly that, in order to quiet her, I rocked with 
might and main, and unless papa had rushed to 
the rescue it is probable that Eliane and Josephine 
would have been tossed out upon the floor. Jean- 
nie was at once summoned to take me away in dis- 
grace, and in bonne mamari's room I was consoled 
by two dragees, one white, I remember, and one 
pink. 

"You love your little sister, don't you, my dar- 
ling*?" asked bonne maman^ to whom Jeannie re- 
lated the affair of the rocking. 

"No," I replied, the pink dragee in my m*outh. 

"Why not, dear?" 

"She is horrid," I said. And as bonne maman^ 
much distressed, continued to question and ex- 
postulate, I burst, despite the dragees, into a tor- 



ELIANE 47 

rent of tears and cried : "She is bad I She is ugly I 
She cries !" 

Eliane's christening was a grand affair. Her 
godmother was bonne maman^ and her godfather 
my uncle de Salabery, who brought her a casket 
in which was a cup and saucer in enamel and also 
an enamel egg-cup and tiny, round egg-spoon, and 
this I thought very silly, since Eliane, like the 
cockchafer, ate only milk. The casket was of 
pale-blue velvet, and had Eliane's name written 
upon it in golden letters. She was carried to the 
cathedral by her nurse, who wore a gray silk dress 
woven with silver fleurs-de-lis, a special silk, with 
its silver threads, made in Brittany. The bodice 
opened on a net guimpe thickly embroidered with 
white beads. The apron was of gray satin scat- 
tered over with a design, worked in beads, that 
looked like tiny fish. Her coif was the tall 
medieval hennin of Plougastel, a flood of lace fall- 
ing from its summit. Eliane, majestically car- 
ried on her white-lace cushion, wore a long robe of 
lace and lawn, and again I found this very silly, 
since if by chance she wished to walk, she would 



48 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

certainly stumble in it I The cure was replaced 
by the bishop of the cathedral, who walked with 
a tall golden stick, twisted at the top into a pretty 
design. Papa, who was near me, explained to 
me that this was called a crozier {crosse)^ which 
puzzled me, as crosse is also the name for the 
drumstick of a chicken. I also learned that what 
I called the bishop's hat was a miter. When he 
passed before us every one knelt down except me, 
for I wished to gaze with all my eyes at the mag- 
nificent apparition. The bishop leaned toward 
me, smiling, and made a little cross on my fore- 
head with his thumb, and then he put his hand, 
which was very white and adorned with a great 
ring of amethyst and diamond, before my lips. 
"Kiss Monseigneur's hand," papa whispered, and, 
again much puzzled, I obeyed, for maman and 
bonne maman gave their hands to be kissed by men 
and never kissed theirs. When the bishop put the 
salt in Eliane's mouth she made the most hideous 
grimace. Heavens ! how ugly she was I Maman 
took her into her arms to calm her. I was near 
bonne maman who had been borne in her sedan- 




The beach of Loctudiy 



ELIANE 51 

chair into the cathedral, and I whispered to her: 
"You say that she is pretty, bonne maman. Only 
look at her now I Does n't she look like an angry 
little monkey I" But bonne maman reminded me 
in a low voice that unless I was very good, I was 
not to come to the christening breakfast, and, 
hastily, I began to turn my tongue in my mouth. 

I remember that on this day bonne maman had 
left her puce-color and looked like an old fairy as 
she sat, covered with all her jewels, in the sedan- 
chair, dressed in orange-colored velvet. 

When we came out of the cathedral the square 
was full of people, and all the children of Quimper 
were there. My father, leading me by the hand, 
was followed by a servant who carried a basket of 
dragces. He took out a bagful and told me that 
I was to throw them to the children, and this I did 
with great gusto. What a superb bombardment 
it was I The children rolled upon the ground, 
laughed, and howled, while maman, and bonne 
maman from the window of her chair, scattered 
handfuls of centimes, sous, and Hards, an old coin 
of the period that no longer exists. Never in my 



52 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

life have I seen happier children. They accom- 
panied us to our door and stayed for a long time 
outside in the street, singing Breton canticles and 
crying, "Vive Mademoiselle Lianel" 

It must have been at about this time that I first 
saw the sea and had my first sea-bath. Papa said 
one day that he would take me to the beach of 
Loctudiy, near Quimper, with old Gertrude. It 
is a vast sandy beach, with scattered rocks that, to 
my childish eyes, stood like giants around us. 
Gertrude took off my shoes and stockings, and we 
picked up the shells that lay along the beach in the 
sunlight like a gigantic rainbow. What a delight 
it was I Some were white, some yellow, some 
pink, and some of a lovely rosy mauve. I could 
not pick them up fast enough or carry those I al- 
ready had. My little pail overflowed, and the 
painful problem that confronts all children en- 
gaged in this delicious pursuit would soon have 
oppressed me if my thoughts had not been turned 
in another direction by the sight of papa making 
his way toward the sea in bathing-dress. The sea 
was immense and mysterious, and my beloved 



ELIANE 53 

papa looked very small before it. I ran to him 
crying: 

"Don't go, papal Don't go I You will be 
drowned I" 

"There is no danger of that, my pet," said my 
father. "See how smooth and blue the water is. 
Don't you want to come with me'?" 

I felt at once that I did, and in the twinkling of 
an eye Gertrude had undressed me, my father had 
me in his arms, and before I could say "Ouf !" I 
was plunged from head to foot in the Atlantic 
Ocean. It was my second baptism, and I still feel 
an agreeable shudder when I remember it. My 
father held me under the arms to teach me to swim, 
and I vigorously agitated my little legs and arms. 
Then I was given back to Gertrude, who dried 
me and, taking me by the hand, made me run up 
and down on the hot sand until I was quite warm. 

When I came home, full of pride in my ex- 
ploits, I told bonne maman that during my swim I 
had met a whale which had looked at me. 

"And were you afraid of it'?" asked honne 
maman. 



54 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

"Oh, no," I replied. "They do not eat chil- 
dren. I patted it." 

Perhaps my tendency to tell tall stories dates 
from this time. 



CHAPTER III 

THE FETE AT KER-ELIANE 

IT was shortly after Eliane's christening, and to 
celebrate my mother's recovery, that my 
father gave a great entertainment at Ker-Eliane, 
near Loch-ar-Brugg. 

Loch-ar-Brugg, which means Place of Heather, 
was an old manor and property that my father had 
bought and at that time used as a hunting-lodge, 
and Ker-Eliane was a wild, beautiful piece of 
country adjoining it, a pleasure resort, called after 
my mother's name. 

To reach Loch-ar-Brugg we all went by the 
traveling carriage to my father's native town of 
Landerneau. I dreaded these journeys, since in- 
side the carriage I always became sick ; but on this 
occasion I sat outside near an old servant of my 
grandmother's called Soisick, the diminutive of 
Francois, and was very happy, since in the open 

55 



56 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

air I did not suffer at all. Soisick was an old 
Breton from Brest. He wore the costume of that 
part of the country, a tightly fitting, long, black 
jacket opening over a waistcoat adorned with 
white-bone buttons, full knee-breeches of coarse, 
white linen girded over the waistcoat with a red 
woolen sash, with white woolen stockings, and 
black shoes. One still sees very old Bretons wear- 
ing this costume, but nowadays the peasants prefer 
the vulgar, commonplace dress of modern work- 
people. 

My father was waiting for us on the quay of 
Landerneau. What joy I felt when I saw him I 
When he climbed up beside me and Soisick my 
happiness was complete. 

Loch-ar-Brugg at that time was not suitably 
arranged for our habitation, and we drove on to 
the Chateau de Ker-Azel near by, where we were 
to stay with my tante de Laisieu. This elder 
sister of my mother's was a fat, untidy, shiftless 
woman who had once been a beauty, but whose 
abundant fair hair was now faded, and who went 
about her house and gardens in the mornings en 



r^ 















"The Chateau de Ker-Azel near 
by, where we were to stay" 



THE FETE AT KER-ELIANE 59 

camisole. When dressed for the day her appear- 
ance was hardly more decorous, for she wore no 
stays, and fastened the slender bodices of her old 
dresses across her portly person in a very hap- 
hazard fashion, so that intervals of white under- 
clothing showed between the straining hooks. 
She was a singular contrast to my mother, always 
so freshly perfect in every detail of her toilet. 
The chateau was partly old and partly new and 
very ugly, though the park that sloped down to it 
was fine. Near the chateau stood a very old and 
beautifully carved font that must have belonged 
to a church long since destroyed. Later on, in 
the days of her descendants, it was kept filled with 
growing fiowers and was a beautiful object, but 
my aunt merely used it as a sort of waste-paper 
basket for any scraps she picked up in the park. 
We children used to conceal ourselves in it in our 
games of hide-and-seek. I enjoyed myself among 
my many cousins, for I was at this time so young 
and so naughty that they tended to give way to me 
in everything. One of them, however, a singu- 
larly selfless and devout boy called France, was 



6o A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

fond of me for myself, and though I never paid 
much attention to him, victim rather than play- 
mate as he usually was in the games of the 
others, I was always aware of his gentle, pro- 
tecting presence, and happy when his peaceful 
gaze rested upon me. After long years of separa- 
tion and in our great old age we discovered, France 
and I, that we had always been dear friends, and 
in the few years that remained to us before his 
recent death we saw each other constantly. But I 
must return to the fete. 

My mother and my aunt were absorbed in 
preparations. It was a general hurly-burly, every 
one running north, south, east, and west — to 
Landerneau, to Morlaix, to Brest, to every place, 
in short, that could boast some special delicacy. 
And at last the great day came, and we children 
were up with the lark. There was first to be a 
luncheon for the huntsmen, friends of papa's, and 
the ladies were to follow in carriages and to 
enter Ker-Eliane from the highroad. But we pre- 
ferred the shorter way, by the deep paths over- 
grown with hawthorn and blackberry. The boys 



THE FETE AT KER-ELIANE 61 

rushed along on the tops of the talus^ the sort of 
steep bank that in Brittany takes the place of 
hedges, and even with Jeannie to restrain me I was 
nearly as torn and tattered as they when we ar- 
rived at Ker-Eliane. What a fairy-land it was ! 
Rocks and streams, heathery hills, and woods full 
of bracken. An old ruin, strange and melan- 
choly, with only a few crumbling walls and a 
portion of ivy-clothed tower left standing, rose 
among trees on a little hill near the entrance, and 
farther on, surrounded by woods of beech or pine, 
were three lakes, lying in a chain one after the 
other. Water-lilies grew upon them, and at their 
brinks a pinkish-purple flower the name of which 
I never knew. The third lake was so somber and 
mysterious that my father had called it the Styx. 
An ancient laurel-tree — in Brittany the laurels 
become immense trees — had been uprooted in a 
thunderstorm and had fallen across the Styx, mak- 
ing a natural rustic bridge. We children were 
forbidden to cross on it, but on this day I remem- 
ber my adventurous cousin Jules rushing to and 
fro from one bank to the other in defiance of 



62 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

authority. At the foot of the hill, below the ruin, 
a clear, delicious stream sprang forth from a stony 
cleft and wound through a valley and out into the 
lower meadows, and at the entrance to the valley, 
among heather and enormous mossy rocks, rose a 
cross of gray stone without Christ or ornaments. 
The peasants made pilgrimages to it on Good 
Friday, but I never learned its history. 

It was among the lower meadows, in a charm- 
ing, smiling spot planted with chestnuts, poplars, 
and copper beeches, that the table for the thirty 
huntsmen was laid in the shade of a little avenue. 
Already the crepe-makevs from Ouimper, re- 
nowned through all the country, were laying their 
fires upon the ground under the trees, and I must 
pause here to describe this Breton dish. A care- 
fully compounded batter, flavored either with va- 
nilla or malaga, was ladled upon a large flat pan 
and spread thinly out to its edge with a wooden 
implement rather like a paper-cutter. By means 
of this knife the crepes, when browned on one side, 
were turned to the other with a marvelous dex- 
terity, then lifted from the pan and folded at once 



THE FETE AT KER-ELIANE 63 

into a square, like a pocket-handkerchief, for, if 
allowed to cool, they cracked. They were as fine 
as paper — six would have made the thickness of 
an ordinary pancake, and were served very hot 
with melted butter and fresh cream, of which a 
crystal jar stood before each guest, and was re- 
plenished by the servants as it was emptied. 

The crepes were eaten at the end of the luncheon 
as a sweet, and among the other dishes that I re- 
member was the cold salmon, — invariable on such 
occasions, salmon abounding in our Breton rivers, 
— with a highly spiced local sauce, fdet de boeuf 
e7i aspic, York ham, fowls, Russian salad, and the 
usual cakes and fruits. The huntsmen seated at 
this feast did not wear the pink coats and top-hats 
of more formal occasions, but dark jackets and 
knee-breeches and the small, round Breton cap 
with upturned brim that admitted of a pipe being 
tucked into it at one side. And so they carried 
their pipes, as the peasants did, and the legitimists 
among them had a golden fleur-de-lis fixed in 
front. The ladies of the party, in summer dresses 
and wide-brimmed hats, arrived when the more 



64 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

substantial part of the repast was over, and their 
carriages filled the highroad outside the precincts 
of Ker-Eliane. A feast was spread at a little dis- 
tance for the peasants, and wine flowed all day. 
After the feasting two famous bimou-p\2.ycTS took 
up their places on the high talus that separated 
Ker-Eliane from Loch-ar-Brugg and played the 
farandol, the jabadao, and other country-dances 
for the peasants to dance to. The biniou is rather 
like a small bagpipe and produces a wild, shrill 
sound. The players wore a special costume : their 
caps and their stockings were bright red; their 
jackets and waistcoats bright blue, beautifully 
embroidered; their full white breeches of coarse 
linen. Like all the peasants at that time, they 
wore their hair long, falling over the shoulders. 
It was a charming sight to see the peasants danc- 
ing, all in their local costumes. The women's 
skirts were of black or red stuff, with three bands 
of velvet, their bodices of embroidered velvet, and 
they all wore a gold or silver Breton cross, hung on 
a black velvet ribbon, round their necks, and a 
S>aint 'Esprit embroidered in gold on the front of 



3 ^ 

a- ^ 

n> 

t-t- "I 

m ^ 

CD 

a- a. 




THE FETE AT KER-ELIANE 67 

their bodices. Among the coifs I remember sev- 
eral beautiful tall hennins. What a day it was I 
Landerneau talked of it for years, and I have never 
forgotten it. We children had our luncheon sit- 
ting on the grass near the big table, and afterward 
there were endless games among the heather and 
bracken. My little sister Eliane appeared, car- 
ried in her pink basket, and seemed to look about 
her with great approval. 

Later on in the day, when the dancing had be- 
gun, we went to look on at that, and I wanted very 
much to dance, too; but nobody asked me, for I 
was too little. I must by that time have begun to 
get very tired and troublesome, for I remember 
that maman promised me a little wheelbarrow if I 
would be good and allowed Jeannie to take me 
back to Ker-Azel. I was already sleepy, as I had 
drunk a quantity of champagne, with which the 
servants had replenished my little liqueur-glass, 
and I allowed myself at last to be carried away by 
Jeannie, and fell asleep in her arms. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE OLD HOUSE AT LANDERNEAU 

DURING these early years of my life our 
time, though mainly spent with bonne 
maman at Quimper, was also given for many 
months of the year to Landerneau, and a little 
later on was divided between these two houses and 
Loch-ar-Brugg. At Landerneau we lived in a vast 
old house that had been part of my mother's mar- 
riage dowry. The family house, equally old and 
vast, of the Kerouguets was also at Landerneau, 
and the house of dear Tante Rose, my father's 
eldest sister. Landerneau was a picturesque old 
town, so near the sea that the tides rose and fell 
in the River Elorn, which flowed through it. A 
legend ran that the part of Landerneau lying on 
the southern banks of the river, still all wild with 
great rocks that seemed to have been hurled to- 
gether by some giant's hand, had been reduced to 

68 



THE OLD HOUSE 69 

this condition by the devil. He had been travel- 
ing through the country, and the inhabitants of the 
southern half of Landerneau had refused to give 
him food and drink, vi^hereas those of the northern 
half had suitably and diplomatically entertained 
him; and it was in vengeance that he had hurled 
these great rocks across the river, to remain as 
permanent, if picturesque, embarrassments to 
southern Landerneau. The morality "of the story 
was disconcerting, and very much puzzled me 
when I was told it by old Gertrude. Our house 
formed a corner of the principal street in the north- 
ern side of the town. In the days of the Ter- 
ror, not so far distant in my childhood, it had been 
used, with the house of Tante Rose across the way, 
as a prison where the condemned were put on their 
way to be guillotined at Brest, and a subterranean 
passage that ran between the two houses, under the 
street, conveyed the unfortunates swiftly and un- 
obtrusively, if occasion required it, from one 
prison to the other. Another lugubrious memento 
of that terrible time were the small square open- 
ings in the floors of the upper rooms in these 



70 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

houses. In our days they were used to summon 
servants from below, but their original purpose 
had been for watching the captives unobserved. 
In the panels of the great oaken door that opened 
on the street, in our house, were little grated 
squares through which those who knocked for ad- 
mittance could be cautiously examined, and this 
feature gave a further idea of the strange and 
perilous circumstances of bygone days. The 
kitchen, which was entered from a stone hall, 
was our delight; it was called the every-day 
kitchen. Enormous logs burned in a vast open 
fireplace, archaically carved. At that time coal 
was little known in the country, and the joints 
were roasted on a spit before this fire, which looked 
like the entrance to an inferno. There was a little 
oven for stews and sweets, etc. Under a square 
glass case on the mantel-shelf, lifted high above 
the busy scene, stood a statue of the Virgin, very 
old and very ugly, dressed in tinsel, a necklace of 
colored beads around its neck. This was a cher- 
ished possession of Nicole's, an old cook of my 
grandmother's, who followed us everywhere, and 



THE OLD HOUSE 71 

at its foot, under the glass cover, lay her withered 
orange-flower wedding-wreath. The kitchen was 
lighted at night by numbers of tallow candles that 
burned in tall brass candlesticks, each with its pin- 
cers and snuffer. (A candle with us does not 
"take snuff"; it has "its nose blown" — on mou- 
chait la chandelle.) Brass warming-pans, which 
we children called Bluebeard's wives, were 
ranged along the walls, and a multitude of copper 
saucepans hung in order of size, glittering with 
special splendor on those spaces that could be 
seen from the street, for "oii Vorgueil ne va Vil pas 
se nicker?'' Through an opening in the wall op- 
posite the big windows dishes could be passed to 
the servants in the dining-room during meals. 
The dining-room windows looked out at a gar- 
den full of flowers, the high walls embroidered 
with espalier fruit-trees, plum-, cherry-, mulberry-, 
and medlar-trees growing along the paths. At the 
bottom of the garden was a large aviary contain- 
ing golden and silver pheasants, magpies, canaries, 
and exotic birds that my father's naval friends had 
brought him from their long Oriental voyages. 



72 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

My father himself tended these birds, and I can 
answer for it that they lacked nothing. I must 
tell here of the strange behavior of a golden 
pheasant. Despite papa's gentleness and care, 
this bird seemed to detest him and would not let 
him enter the aviary; but when I came with papa, 
the pheasant would run to the wires and eat the 
bread I held out to it from my hand. Papa was 
surprised and interested, and suggested one day 
that I should go with him into the aviary and "see 
what the pheasant would say." No sooner said 
than done. The bird rushed at papa and pecked 
at his feet with a singular ferocity; then, feeling, 
evidently, that he had disposed of his enemy, he 
turned to me, spread out his wings before me, 
bowed up and down as if an ecstasy of reverent de- 
light, and taking the bread I held out to him, he 
paid no more attention at all to papa. 

The principal rooms on the ground floor of the 
house opened on a stone hall with an inlaid marble 
floor, where, in a niche carved in the wall, and 
facing the wide stone staircase, stood another Vir- 
gin, much larger and even older than Nicole's. 



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" In the panels of the great oaken 
door . . . were little grated squares" 



THE OLD HOUSE 75 

She was of stone, with a blunted, gentle counte- 
nance, and hands held out at each side in a grace- 
ful, simple gesture that seemed to express surprise 
as much as benediction. As we came down from 
our rooms every morning it was as if she greeted us 
always with a renewed interest. Fresh flowers 
were laid at her feet every day, and we were all 
taught, the boys to lift their hats, the girls to drop 
deep curtseys before her. Indeed, these respects 
were paid by us to all the many statues of the 
Virgin that are seen on our Breton roads. From 
the hall one entered the salon, with its inlaid par- 
quet floor, so polished that we were forbidden to 
slide upon it, for it was as slippery as ice, and 
falls were inevitable for disobedient ^children. 
On the mantelpiece was a clock representing 
Marius weeping over the ruins of Carthage. His 
cloak lay about his knees, and we used to feel that 
he would have done much better had he drawn it 
up and covered his chilly-looking bronze shoul- 
ders. On each side of the clock were white vases 
with garlands in relief upon them of blue con- 
volvulus and their green leaves. But what be- 



76 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

witched us children were the big Chinese porcelain 
figures, mandarins sitting cross-legged, with heads 
that nodded gently up and down at the slightest 
movement made in the room. Their bellies were 
bare, their eyes seemed to laugh, and they were 
putting out their tongues. Black ibises upon their 
robes opened wide beaks to catch butterflies. I re- 
member crossing the hall on tiptoe and opening 
the salon-door very softly and looking in at the 
mandarins sitting there in their still merriment; 
and it required a little courage, as though one 
summoned a spell, to shake the door and rouse 
them into life. The heads gently nodded, the 
eyes seemed to laugh with a new meaning at me 
now; and I gazed, half frightened, half laughing, 
too, until all again was motionless. It was as if a 
secret jest had passed between me and the man- 
darins. In an immense room to the left of the 
salon that had once, perhaps, been a ball-room, 
but was now used as a laundry, was a high sculp- 
tured fireplace that was my joy. On each side the 
great greyhounds, sitting up on their hind legs, sus- 
tained the mantelpiece, all garlanded with vines. 



THE OLD HOUSE 77 

Among the leaves and grapes one saw a nest of 
little birds, with their beaks wide open, and the 
father and mother perched above them. And, 
most beautiful of all, a swallow in flight only 
touched with the tip of a wing a leaf, and really 
seemed to be flying. Only my father appreciated 
this masterpiece, which must have been a superb 
example of Renaissance work, and when, years 
afterward, my mother sold the house, the new 
owner had it broken up and carted away because 
it took up too much room ! 

On the two floors above were many bedrooms 
not only for our growing family, but for that of 
my Aunt de Laisieu, who, with all her children, 
used to pay us long and frequent visits, so that 
even in the babyhood of Eliane and Ernest and 
Maraquita I never lacked companionship. 

My mother's room was called la chamhre des 
colonnes^ because at the foot of the bed, and used 
there instead of bedposts, were two great stone 
pillars wreathed with carving and reaching to the 
ceiling. What a pretty room it was ! In spring 
its windows looked down at a sea of fruit-blossoms 



78 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

and flowers in the garden beneath. The bed had a 
domed canopy, with white muslin curtains em- 
broidered in green spots. Above the doors were 
two allegorical paintings, one of Love, who makes 
Time pass, and one of Time, who makes Love pass. 
A deep, mysterious drawer above the oaken 
mantelpiece was used by matnan for storing pots 
of specially exquisite preserves that were kept for 
winter use. On her dressing-table, flowing with 
muslin and ribbons, I specially remember the great 
jar of eau de Cologne^ which one used to buy, as if 
it were wine, by the liter. 

From this room led papa's, more severe and 
masculine. Here there were glass cabinets fitted 
on each side into the deep window-seats and con- 
taining bibelots from all over the world. A group 
of family miniatures hung on the wall near the 
fireplace. 

On a turning of the staircase was a bath-room, 
with a little sort of sentry-box for cold douches, 
and at the top of the house an enormous garret, 
filled with broken old spinning-wheels and furni- 
ture, bundles of old dresses, chests full of dusty 



THE OLD HOUSE 79 

papers. I found here one day bonne maman's be- 
trothal-dress. It was of stiif, rich satin, a wide 
blue and white stripe, with a dark line on each 
side of the blue and a little garland of pink roses 
running up the white. The long, pointed bodice 
was incredibly narrow. A strange detail was the 
coarseness with which this beautiful dress was 
finished inside. It was lined with a sort of sack- 
ing, and the old lace with which it was still 
adorned was pinned into place with brass safety- 
pins. Finally, for my description of the house, 
there was a big courtyard, with the servants' quar- 
ters built round it, and a clear little stream ran 
through a hasse-cour stocked with poultry. 

I had not seen this house for over fifty years 
when, some time ago, I went to visit it. The new 
proprietor, an unprepossessing person, was leaning 
against the great oaken door. He permitted me, 
very ungraciously, to enter. 

I went through all these rooms that two genera- 
tions ago had rung with the sounds of our happy 
young life, and it was misery to me. In the 
kitchen, which had been so beautiful, the window- 



8o A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

panes were broken, and the dismantled walls 
daubed with whitewash, with dusty, empty bottles 
where Nicole's Virgin had stood. Upon the table 
was a greasy, discolored oil-cloth, where one saw 
M. Thiers, with knitted eyebrows and folded 
arms, surrounded by tricolor flags. The salon — I 
sobbed as I stood and looked about it; all, all that 
I had known and loved had disappeared. The 
stone Virgin was gone from her niche in the hall. 
Trembling, I mounted to my dear parents' rooms. 
What desolation I Unmade beds and rickety iron 
bedsteads; dust, disorder, and dirt. The carved 
chimneypiece, with its great drawer, was gone; the 
paper was peeled from the walls. Only over the 
doors, almost invisible under their cobwebs, were 
the painted panels of Love, who makes Time pass, 
and Time, who makes Love pass. The garden 
was a dung-heap. 

When I came out, pale and shaken, the pro- 
prietor, still complacently leaning against the 
door, remarked, "Eh bien. Madam is glad to have 
seen her house, is n't she!" 

The animal I I could have strangled him/ 




' I felt that Tante Rose was enchanting ' 



CHAPTER V 

TANTE ROSE 

OVER the way lived Xante Rose. We chil- 
dren liked best to go to her house by means 
of the subterranean passage. It was pich-dark, 
and we felt a fearful delight as we galloped 
through it at full speed, and then beat loudly upon 
the door at the other end, so that old Kerandraon 
should not keep us waiting for a moment in the 
blackness. In the salon, between the windows, 
her tame magpie hopping near her, we would find 
Xante Rose spinning at her wheel. Xhere were 
pink ribbons on her distaff, and her beautiful, 
rounded arms moved gently to and fro drawing 
out the fine white linen thread. Sitting, as I see 
her thus, with her back to the light, her white 
tulle head-dress and the tulle bow beneath her 
chin surrounded her delicate, rosy face with a sort 
of aureole. She had a pointed little chin and gay, 

83 



84 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

blue eyes, and though she had snowy hair, she 
looked so young and was so active that she seemed 
to have quicksilver in her veins. A tranquil mirth 
was her distinguishing characteristics, and even 
when hardly more than a baby I felt that Tante 
Rose was enchanting. Her first question was sure 
to be, "Are you hungry*?" and even if we had 
just risen from a meal we were sure to be hungry 
when we came to see Tante Rose. She would 
blow into a little silver whistle that hung at her 
waist, and old Kerandraon (we children pro- 
nounced it Ker-le dragon) would appear with his 
benevolent, smiling face. 

"Take Mademoiselle Sophie's orders, Keran- 
draon," Tante Rose would say; but the dear old 
man, who was a great friend, did not need to wait 
for them. 

"Demoiselle would like crepes and fresh cream; 
and there is the rest of the chocolate paste which 
Demoiselle likes, too." 

"Bring what pleases you," Tante Rose would 
say, "and take my key, Kerandraon, and fetch the 
box of Sucre d'orge from the shelf in my ward- 



XANTE ROSE 87 

robe." When Kerandraon had come ambling 
back with his laden tray he would stop and talk 
with us while we ate. He was seventy years old 
and had a noble air in his long Louis XV jacket. 
Tante Rose's mother had taken him from the 
streets when he was a little beggar-boy of twelve. 
He lived in the family service all his life, and 
when he died at seventy-five he was buried in the 
family vault. Jacquette, the magpie, sometimes 
became very noisy on these festive occasions, and 
Tante Rose would say : "Go into the garden, Jac- 
quette. Tu ni' annuls''' (so she pronounced en- 
nuies). And Jacquette, who seemed to under- 
stand everything she said, would go obediently 
hopping off. In the garden, adjoining the salon, 
was a greenhouse full of grapes and flowers, and 
that was another haven of delight on our visits 
to Tante Rose. It was the prettiest sight to see 
her mounted on a step-ladder cutting the grapes. 
A servant held the ladder, and another the basket 
into which the carefully chosen bunches were 
dropped. Tante Rose's little feet were shod in a 
sort of high-heeled brown-satin slipper called 



88 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

cothurnes^ probably because they tied in classic 
fashion across the instep, little gold acorns hang- 
ing at the ends of the ribbons. I have the most 
distinct recollection of these exquisite feet as I 
stood beside the ladder looking up at Tante Rose 
and waiting for her to drop softly a great bunch 
of grapes into my hands. The fruit-trees of 
Tante Rose's garden were famous. A great old 
fig-tree there was so laden with fruit that supports 
had to be put under the heavy branches; there 
were wonderful Smyrna plums, and an apple- tree 
covered with tiny red apples that were our joy. 
From a high terrace in the garden one could watch 
all that went on in the town below. Tante Rose's 
cream, too, was famous. Great earthenware pans 
of milk stood on the wide shelves of her dairy, and 
when maman came to see her she would say, "May 
I go into the dairy, Rose*?" It was always known 
what this meant. Maman would skim for herself 
a bowlful of the thick, golden cream. 

Even the kitchen had an elegance, a grace, and 
sparkle all its own, and it is here that I can most 
characteristically see Tante Rose distributing milk 



XANTE ROSE 89 

for the poor of Landerneau. Her farmers' wives 
had brought it in from the country in large, cov- 
ered pails, and Xante Rose, dressed in a morning- 
gown of puce-colored silk (like bonne maman in 
this, she wore no other color), her full sleeves, 
with their wide lawn cuffs turned back over her 
arms, ladled it into jars, giving her directions the 
while to the servants : "Xhis for Yann, Xhis for 
Herve [an old cripple]. Did this milk come 
from the yellow? It is sure, then, to be very 
good; take it to the hospital and — wait! Xhis 
little jug of cream to the superieure; she is so fond 
of it. And, Laic, this large jar is for the prison," 
for Xante Rose forgot nobody, and all with such 
quiet grace and order. Xhe poor of Landerneau 
adored her. Xhe thread she spun was woven at 
her country place, La Fontaine Blanche, into linen 
to make clothes for them, and she knitted socks and 
waistcoats even as she went about the streets on 
her errands of mercy. If the poor loved her, it 
was respect mingled with a little fear that the 
bourgeoisie felt, for she had no patience with 
scandal-mongering and sharply checked their gos- 



90 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

siping, provincial habits. The chatelaines of the 
surrounding country sought her out and delighted 
in her charm, her accomplishments, and her devil- 
may-care wit. Tante Rose was married to a 
wealthy and excellent Landernean, Joseph Goury, 
whom we called Tonton Joson, and his friends, 
Jason. He had a placid, kindly face, and stout, 
fine calves incased in silk stockings. Still in love 
with his wife, he was patiently submissive to her 
gay sallies ; for though very fond of him, she did 
not conceal that she found him a dull companion. 
Very drolly, though she tutoyed him, she used al- 
ways to address him as "Monsieur Goury." 
''TaiS'toi^ Monsieur Goury,'' she would say; "you 
are as tiresome as the flies." And after enduring 
his prosy talk for some time she would say quite 
calmly: "I am beginning to drink hemlock. Go 
away. Monsieur Goury — va fen. You bore me 
to distraction. You stun and stupefy me. Go 
away. Je n'en puis plus'' And poor Tonton 
Joson remaining helplessly gazing, she would lift 
the little trap-door beside her chair, if the scene 
took place in her room, and call out to the serv- 



XANTE ROSE 91 

ants below, "Tell Laic to come up and help 
monsieur on with his coat." 

"But, my dear, I was not thinking of going out," 
Tonton Joson would protest; and Tante Rose 
would reply: 

"Mais tu sors. Monsieur Goury." 

Tante Rose was very devout, but after her own 
fashion. She read the office to herself every day, 
but had many librepensant friends, with whom 
she used good-temperedly to argue. Any bishop 
who came to Landerneau stayed always with 
Tante Rose. 

Her cuisine was the best I have ever eaten ; and 
oh, the incredible abundance of those days I All 
the courses were served at once upon the immense 
table. The great silver soup-tureen, big enough 
for a baby's bath, and so tall that she had to stand 
up to it, was in front of Tante Rose, and before 
she began to ladle out the platefuls, with the light, 
accurate movements of her arms characteristic of 
her, a servant carefully fastened behind her her 
long sleeves a la pagode. It was really charming 
to watch her serving the soup, and I remember 



92 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

one guest asserting that he would eat potage four 
times if Mmc. Goury helped him to it. 

An enormous salmon usually occupied the center 
of the table, and there were six entrees^ four rotis^ 
two hot and two cold, and various entremets and 
desserts. A favorite entree was a puree of 
pistachio nuts, with roasted sheeps' tails on silver 
spits stuck into it. The hot dishes stood on silver 
heaters filled with glowing charcoal. Between 
the courses little pots of cream, chocolate, vanilla, 
and coffee were actually passed and actually 
eaten I Chocolate cream to fill the gap between 
woodcock and foie-gras, for instance I Cham- 
pagne-bottles stood in silver coolers at each corner 
of the table. I wonder that we all survived. On 
the other hand, when Tante Rose or my mother re- 
ceived the visits of their friends, there was no 
afternoon tea to offer them, as nowadays. The 
servants merely passed round little glasses of 
Spanish wines and plates of small biscuits. The 
good ladies of Landerneau afforded, I imagine, 
much amusement to my mother and to Tante 
Rose, who, though a native, was of a very different 



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"I had only to sweep up the rub- 
bish . . . and carry it out of the 
wood in my little wheelbarrow" 



XANTE ROSE 95 

caliber. One little trait I remember was very 
illustrative of the bourgeois habit of mind. At 
that time, as now, lengths of velvet were included 
in every corbeille offered to a bride by the bride- 
groom's family, and the velvet dresses made from 
them were dignified institutions worn year after 
year. One knows how marked and unsightly vel- 
vet soon becomes if sat upon, and it was a wise and 
crafty fashion to have a breadth of perfectly 
matching silk introduced between the full folds at 
the back of these dresses, so that when one sat 
down it was upon the silk. It was in regard to 
this sensible contrivance that the ladies of Lan- 
derneau were reported to declare that it was 
strange indeed to see the noblesse so miserly that 
they could not afford a whole velvet dress, and 
therefore let silk into the back. 

Some of Xante Rose's children were, like her- 
self, very clever and charming, some very stupid, 
like Xonton Joson. It can be imagined what 
games we all had. Once, in the coach-house, my 
older cousins put young Raoul into a large basket 
with a number of smooth stones under him and 



96 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

told him that they were eggs and that if he were 
quiet and patient, they would hatch out. Then 
by means of a rope and pulley to which the basket 
was attached (it must have been used for raising 
and lowering hay and fodder) we pulled poor 
Raoul up to the rafters, and there we left him and 
forgot all about him. His desolate cries were 
heard after a time, and when he was rescued, it 
was found that the rocking of the basket had 
made him very seasick. 

Of all our games the best were those in the 
woods of La Fontaine Blanche, This property of 
Tante Rose's, with its old manor-house dating 
from the time of Queen Anne of Brittany, was 
near Landerneau, and since papa went there 
nearly every day, caring for it as if it were his own, 
we were able to go with him and take full pos- 
session of the beautiful woods. We were given 
planks and tools, and we built a little hut on the 
banks of the stream. I was so young that my 
share of the labors was unexacting, as I had only 
to sweep up the rubbish left by the builders and 
carry it out of the wood in my little wheelbarrow; 



XANTE ROSE 97 

but I remember that pride with which I felt my- 
self associated in any capacity with such marvels 
of construction. Not only was the hut entirely 
built by my cousins, but they made an oven inside 
it and even fabricated a sort of earthenware serv- 
ice with the clay soil found along the banks of the 
stream. It would never fire properly, however, 
and therefore our attempts to bake bread were not 
successful. 

But crepes^ as pure-blooded young Bretons, we 
could make, and our parents were often enter- 
tained by us and regaled with them as they sat 
under the trees. Oh, how happy we were I The 
woods were full of lilies of the valley, and our 
hut had been baptized by the cure of Landerneau 
the chateau de la Muguetterie, while we were 
called Robinson Crusoes, and this was to us all our 
greatest glory. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE DEMOISELLES DE COATNAMPRUN 

ACROSS the way from our house in Lan- 
derneau lived two old maiden ladies, the 
Demoiselles de Coatnamprun. The Marquis and 
Marquise de Coatnamprun, their father and 
mother, had died many years ago, and most of 
the small fortune had been filched from them in 
some iniquitous lawsuit. I remember them very 
clearly, for I often went to see them with maman 
and Tante Rose, who watched over them and pro- 
tected them; gentle, austere figures, dressed al- 
ways in threadbare black, almost like nuns, with 
long, white bone rosaries hanging at their sides, 
and on their breasts, tied with a red cord, great 
crucifixes of brass and wood. Around their necks 
they wore white handkerchiefs folded, the points 
behind, and when they went out, old-fashioned 
black capotes^ which were large bonnets mounted 



THE DEMOISELLES 99 

and drawn on wires, a quilling of white inside 
around the face. The elder was called Ismenie, 
and the younger Suzette; they had the tenderest 
love for each other. 

Their house was one of the oldest in Landerneau 
and was covered with strange carvings. The 
great knocker always fascinated me, for it repre- 
sented a devil with his pitchfork, and one lifted 
the pitchfork to knock. Almost always it was 
one of the Demoiselles de Coatnamprun who 
answered, and she always held a clean white 
handkerchief by the center, the points shaken 
out, and always swept us, as she appeared 
before us in the doorway, a wonderful, old-fash- 
ioned, stately court curtsey. The sisters were 
plain, with dark, mild eyes, faded skins, and pale, 
withered lips; but their teeth were beautiful, and 
they had abundant hair. Ismenie's features were 
harsh, and her half-closed, near-sighted eyes gave 
her a cold and haughty expression; but in reality 
she was a lamb of gentleness, and no one seeing the 
sisters in their poverty would have taken them for 
anything but grandes dames. 



100 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

When we were ushered into the house it was 
usually into the dining-room that we went. The 
drawing-room, which was called the salle de com- 
pagnie^ was used only on ceremonious occasions, 
Easter, the bishop's visit, or when the noblesse 
from the surrounding country called, and the 
proudest among them were proud to do so. So in 
the salle de compagnie, where engravings of the 
family coats of arms hung along the walls, the 
ugly, massive mahogany furniture was usually 
shrouded in cotton covers, and it was in the din- 
ing-room that the sisters sat, making clothes for 
the poor. Here the pictures interested me very 
much; they were naif^ brightly colored prints 
bought at the Landerneau fairs, and representing 
events in the lives of the saints. St. Christopher, 
bending with his staff in the turbulent stream, 
bore on his shoulder a child so tiny that I could 
never imagine why its weight should incommode 
him, and another doll-like child stood on the vol- 
ume held by St. Anthony of Padua. The oil- 
cloth cover on the table had all the kings and 
queens of France marching in procession round its 



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"Gentle, austere figures, dressed 
always in threadbare black" 



THE DEMOISELLES 103 

border, the dates of their reigns printed above 
their heads. The chairs were common straw-bot- 
tomed kitchen chairs. Maman sometimes tried to 
persuade the sisters to paint the chairs, saying that 
if they were painted bright red, for instance, it 
would make the room so much more cheerful. 
But to any such suggestion they would reply, with 
an air of gentle surprise: "Oh, but maman had 
them like that. We can't change anything that 
maman had." Their large bedroom was on the 
first floor, looking out at the street. It was a most 
dismal room. The two four-posted beds, side by 
side, had canopies and curtains of old tapestry, 
but this was all covered with black cambric muslin 
and had the most funereal air imaginable. At the 
head of Ismenie's bed, crossed against the black, 
were two bones that she had brought from the 
family vault on some occasion when the coffins 
had been moved or opened. The only cheerful 
thing I remember was a childish little etagere fast- 
ened in a corner and filled with the waxen figures 
of the petit Jesus^ and the tiny china dogs, cats and 
birds that had been among their presents on Christ- 



104 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

mas mornings. To give an idea of the extreme 
simplicity and innocence of the Demoiselles de 
Coatnamprun I may say here that to the end of 
their lives they firmly believed that le petit Jesus 
himself came down their kitchen chimney on 
Christmas eve and left their presents for them 
on the kitchen table. Le petit Jesus, as a matter 
of fact, was on these occasions impersonated by 
maman and Tante Rose. Tante Rose always had 
the key of the sisters' house, so that at any time she 
could go in and see that nothing was amiss with 
ses enfants, as she tenderly called them, — and in- 
deed to the end they remained lovely and in- 
genuous children, — so she and maman, when the 
sisters were safely asleep, would steal into the 
house and pile every sort of good thing, from legs 
of mutton to galettes, upon the table, and fill the 
garden sabots that stood ready with bonbons, 
handkerchiefs, and the little china figures of ani- 
mals the sisters so cherished. And always there 
was a waxen figure of le petit Jesus and the card 
with which he made his intention clear; for ""Aux 




Old Kerandraon 



THE DEMOISELLES 107 

Demoiselles de Coatnamprun^ du petit Jesus'^ was 
written upon it. 

Other instances of the sisters' ignorance of life 
and the world I might give, but they would simply 
be received with incredulity. Such types no 
longer exist, and even then the sisters were unique. 
I do not believe that in all their lives they knew an 
evil thought; they were incapable of any form of 
envy or malice or uncharitableness, and filled with 
delight at any good fortune that came to others 
and with gratitude for their own lot in life. 
Sometimes Suzette, in the intimacy of friends, 
would refer with simple sadness to the one drama, 
if such it can be called, that had befallen them. 
"Oui^'^ she would say, "Ismenie a eu un chagrin 
d" amour. ^'' Once, when they were young, in their 
parents' lifetime, an ofBcer had been quartered 
with them, a kindly, intelligent, honest young fel- 
low of the bourgeoisie^ and at once aware of the 
atmosphere of distinction that surrounded him. 
He showed every attention to the sisters, and poor 
Ismenie found him altogether charming. He 



io8 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

never even guessed at her attachment. Indeed, 
no such a marriage at that time would have been 
possible, but she was broken-hearted when he went 
away. Her sister was her confidante, and this 
was the chagrin d'amour to which Suzette some- 
times referred. 

I have said that when they walked out they 
wore capotes. On one occasion Mile. Suzette 
found in a drawer, among old rubbish put away, a 
crumpled artificial rose, a pink rose, and had the 
strange idea of fastening it in front of her capote. 
Ismenie, when her near-sighted eyes caught sight 
of it, stopped short in the street and peered at her 
sister in astonishment. "But, Suzette, what have 
you there?" she asked. Suzette bashfully told 
her that she had found the rose and thought it 
might look pretty. "No, no," said Ismenie, turn- 
ing with her sister back to the house, "you must 
not wear it. Maman never wore anything in her 
capote.^' It required all my mother's skill to per- 
suade them to allow her to dress their hair for 
them on the occasion of an evening party at Tante 
Rose's, to which, as usual, they were going, as 









-V- 






1';^, 



x^j 



'^i«i«'..-»i!t^' 



'They were buried together on the same day" 



THE DEMOISELLES in 

"mamarC had gone, wearing black-lace caps. 
"Voyons, but you have such pretty hair," said 
maman. "Let me only show you how charmingly 
it can be done." They were tempted, yet uncer- 
tain and very anxious, and then maman had the 
opportune memory of an old picture of the mar- 
quise in youth, her hair done in puffs upon her 
forehead. She brought it out triumphantly, and 
the sisters yielded. They could consent to have 
their hair done as ''''maman' s''' had been done in her 
youth. 

We children always went with our parents to 
the evening parties in Landemeau. Maman did 
not like to leave us, and it will be remembered 
that in those days one dined at five o'clock and 
that we children had all our meals except break- 
fast with our parents. It was at a dinner-party 
at Tante Rose's that Mile. Suzette, next whom I 
sat, said to me smiling, with her shy dignity, "I 
have a present here for a little girl who has been 
good," and she drew a small paper parcel from 
the silk reticule that hung beside the rosary at her 
side. I opened it, and found, to my delight, a 



112 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

sugar mouse and a tiny pipe made of red sugar 
such as I knew 77iaman would never allow us to 
eat when we went to the confectioner's. But here, 
in the presence of Mile. Suzette, and the gift a 
gift from her, I felt that I was safe, and I de- 
voured mouse and pipe at once, quite aware of 
inatnan's amused and rallying glance from across 
the table. "I saw you," she said to me afterward. 
"Little ne'er-do-well, you know that I could not 
forbid it when Mademoiselle Suzette was there !" 

The only flower that grew in the Demoiselles 
de Coatnamprun's garden was heliotrope, for that 
had been ''maman's'' favorite flower. They were 
poor gardeners, and the little bonne who came in 
by the day to do the housework could give them 
no help in the garden. So it was Tante Rose, 
trotting on her high heels, a little garden fork on 
her shoulder, who appeared to do battle with the 
moss and dandelions and to restore a little order. 
She always gave to this service the air of a delight- 
ful game, and indeed, in her constant care of the 
poor old ladies, had the prettiest skill imaginable 
in making her gifts weigh nothing. 



THE DEMOISELLES 113 

"My dears," she would say, leaning forward to 
look at their black robes, "are n't these dresses 
getting rather shabby*? Hasn't the time come 
for new ones?" 

"They are shabby," Ismenie would answer 
sadly, " but que voulez-vous^ chere Madame^ our 
means, as you know, are so narrow. It costs so 
much to buy a dress. We could hardly afford 
new ones now." 

"But, on the contrary, it does n't cost so much," 
Tante Rose would say. "I know some excellent 
woolen material, the very thing for your dresses, 
and only five francs for the length. You can well 
afford that, can't you? So I '11 buy it for you and 
bring it to-morrow." 

And so she would, the innocent sisters imagining 
five francs the price of material for which Tante 
Rose paid at least thirty. Since the sisters were 
very proud, for all their gentleness, and could con- 
sent to accept nothing in the nature of a charity, 
and since indeed they could hardly have lived at 
all on what they had, Tante Rose had woven a 
far-reaching conspiracy about them. Her trades- 



114 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

people had orders to sell their meat and vegetables 
to the Demoiselles de Coatnamprun at about a 
fifth of their value. Packets of coffee and sugar 
arrived at their door, and milk and cream every 
morning, and when they asked the messenger what 
the price might be, he would say: "Ccs dj/zics rcg- 
Icront Ic comptc avcc Monsieur Ic Cun\'' and 
since they did not like to refuse gifts trom the 
cure, the innocent plot was never discovered. Of 
course fruits from Tante Rose's garden and cakes 
from her kitchen were things that could be ac- 
cepted. She would bring them herself, and have 
a slice of gjJcttc or a fig from the big basketful 
with them. They were rather greedy, poor dar- 
lings, and since an)- money they could save went to 
the poor, they could never buy such dainties for 
themselves. One extravagance, however, they 
had: when they came out to pay a visit, a piece of 
knitting was always drawn trom the reticule, and 
when one asked what it was one was told in a 
whisper: "Silk stockings — a Christmas present for 
Suzette,'' or Ismenie, as the case might be. Beau- 
tifully knitted, tine, openwork stockings they were. 



THE DEMOISELLES 115 

Another contrivance for their comfort was in- 
vented by Xante Rose. They were great cowards, 
afraid of the dark and in deadly fear of the pos- 
sible robbers that might enter their house at night. 
Tante Rose arranged that when they went to bed 
a lighted, shaded lamp should be placed in their 
window, the shade turned toward their room, the 
light toward the street, so that any robbers passing 
by would be deceived into thinking the house 
still on foot and forego their schemes for break- 
ing in. 

Their hearts were tender toward all forms of 
life. I can see one of them rising from her work 
to rescue a fly that had fallen into trouble and, 
holding it delicately by the wings, lift the persi- 
ennes to let it fly away. One day in their garden 
I cried out in disgust at the sight of a great earth- 
worm writhing across a border. 

"Oh, the horrid worm I Quick I A trowel. 
Mademoiselle, to cut it in two." 

But Mademoiselle Suzette came to look with 
grieved eyes. 

"And why kill the poor creature, Sophie? It 



ii6 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

does us no harm," she said, and helped the worm 
to disappear in the soft earth. 

The Demoiselles de Coatnamprun died one 
winter of some pulmonary affection and within a 
day of one another. They died with the simplic- 
ity and sincerity that had marked all their lives, 
and toward the end they were heard to murmur 
continually, while they smiled as if in sleep, 
''Maman — Papar 

Ismenie died first; but since it was seen that 
Suzette had only a few hours to live, the body was 
kept lying on the bed near hers, and she did not 
know that her beloved sister had been taken from 
her. They were buried together on the same day. 

There was another and very different old lady 
in Landerneau of whom I was very fond and 
whom, since she took a great fancy to me, I saw 
often. Her daughter was a friend of mamarCs 
and made a mesalliance that caused the doors of 
Landerneau to close upon her. Maman^ how- 
ever, remained devoted to her, and continued to 
see as much of her as ever, and her mother, my old 




''illiln I ill 



r 



'\ 



>-^ 




^.t, 



' In the days of the Terror ... it 
had been used ... as a prison" 



THE DEMOISELLES 119 

friend, was entirely indifferent to the doors, closed 
or open, of Landerneau. She wore a brightly col- 
ored Turkish silk handkerchief tied turban-wise 
about her head, and soft gray-leather riding boots, 
— men's boots, — so that she was known in her 
quarter as Chat-hotte. In her own house she wore 
men's dress-breeches, short jacket, and high boots. 
Her feet were remarkably small, and the wave of 
hair on her forehead was as black as jet. She 
was very downright and ready of speech, and used 
to talk to me as though I were a person of her own 
age. "Do you see, Sophie," she would say, "my 
poor daughter is a great goose. She struggles to 
be received, and gets only buffets for her pains. 
Why give oneself so much trouble for nothing?" 
The disconsolate daughter and the son-in-law 
made their home with her in a great old house 
standing on the banks of the river. He was a 
wholesale wine merchant, and barrels and casks of 
wine stood about the entrance. My old friend 
lived almost entirely in her own room on the first 
floor, the strangest room. It was at once spot- 
lessly clean and completely untidy. The bed 



120 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

had no posts or canopy and was shaped like a 
cradle. Bottles of salad-oil stood on the mantel- 
shelf, and a bunch of carrots might be lying on the 
table among bundles of newspapers. From the 
windows one had beautiful views up and down 
the river and could see the stone bridge that had 
old houses built upon it. Across the river were 
her gardens, and she used often to row me over 
to them and to show me the immense old cherry- 
tree, planted by her grandfather, that grew far 
down the river against the walls of an old tower. 
This tower had its story, and I could not sleep at 
night for thinking of it. In her girlhood mad 
people were shut up there. There was only a 
dungeon-room, and the water often rose in it so 
that the forsaken creatures stood up to their knees 
in water. Food was thrown to them through the 
iron bars of the windows, but it was quite insuffi- 
cient, and she gave me terrible descriptions of the 
faces she used to see looking out, ravenous and im- 
ploring. She remembered that the bones pro- 
truded from the knuckles of one old man as he 
clutched the bars. She used to pile loaves of 



THE DEMOISELLES 121 

bread in her little boat, row across to the tower, 
and fix the loaves on the end of an oar so that she 
could pass them up to the window, and she would 
then see the mad people snatching the bread apart 
and devouring it. And when the cherries on the 
great tree were ripe she used to climb up into the 
branches and bend them against the window so 
that they might gather the fruit themselves from 
among the leaves, and she herself would gather all 
she could reach and throw them in. They had 
not even straw to sleep on. When one of them 
died, the body was taken out, and this was all the 
care they had. Such were the horrors in a town 
where people across the river quietly ate and slept, 
and the church-bells rang all day. 



CHAPTER VII 



BON PAPA 



MY most vivid recollections of Grandfather 
de Rosval place him at Landerneau, 
where he would stop with us on his way to Quim- 
per during his tours of inspection. His arrivals in 
the sleepy little town were great affairs and caused 
immense excitement: post-chaise, postilion, whips 
cracking, horns blowing, and a retinue of Parisian 
servants. We children never had more than a 
glimpse of him at first, for he withdrew at once to 
his own rooms to rest and go through his papers. 
When he made his entry into the salon, — the salon 
of the slippery parquet and the nodding manda- 
rins, — all the household was ranged on each side, 
as if for the arrival of a sovereign, and we had all 
to drop deep curtseys before him. 

He was a rather imposing figure, with splendid 
clothes, the coat thickly embroidered along the 




Grandfather de Rosval 



BON PAPA 125 

edge with golden oak-leaves, and a fine, hand- 
some head; but he was enormously, even ridicu- 
lously, stout. With an often terrifying and even 
repellent severity he mingled the most engaging 
playfulness, and our childish feelings toward him 
were strangely compounded of dislike and admira- 
tion. 

When he arrived in the salon a lackey came be- 
hind him, carrying a large linen bag filled with a 
sweetmeat bought at Seugnot's, the great Parisian 
confectioner, I always associate these sweetmeats 
with bon papa. They were called croquignoles., 
were small, hard, yet of the consistency of soft 
chalk when one bit into them, and glazed with 
pink, white, or yellow. After the salutations, hon 
papa would take up his position before the mantel- 
piece and beckon the servant to give him the bag 
of croquignoles. We children, quivering with ex- 
citement, each of us already provided with a small 
basket, stood ready, and as bon papa, with a noble 
gesture, scattered the handfuls of croquignoles far 
and wide, we flung ourselves upon them, scram- 
bling, falling, and filling our baskets, with much 



126 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

laughter and many recriminations. Then, besides 
the little case for fnaman, also from Seugnot's, 
filled with tablets of a delicious sucre-de-pomnie 
in every flavor, were more dignified presents, 
bracelets and rings for her and for our Tante de 
Laisieu and boxes of beautiful toys for us. The 
only cloud cast over these occasions was that after 
having distributed all his bounties, bon papa sat 
down, drew a roll of manuscript from his pocket, 
and composed himself to read in a sonorous voice 
poems of his own composition. Their theme, in- 
variably, was the delight of reentering one's fam- 
ily and country, and they were very pompous and 
very long, sometimes moving bon papa almost to 
tears. The comic scene of family prayers that 
followed was pure relief, for even we children felt 
it comic to see bon papa praying. 

"And are they good children?" he would ask. 
"Have they said their prayers'?" 

"Not yet, mon pere^'' maman would answer. 
"They always say their prayers at bedtime." 
But bon papa was not to be so deterred from yet 
another ceremony. 




"The chateau was one of 
the oldest in. Finisterre" 



BON PAPA 129 

"Good, good I" he would reply. "We will all 
say the evening prayers together, then." 

And when we had all obediently knelt down 
around the room, bon papa recited the prayers in 
the same complacent, sonorous voice, making mag- 
nificent signs of the cross the while. On one of 
these occasions we were almost convulsed by poor 
little Ernest, whom bon papa had taken in his 
arms, aYid who was so much alarmed by the great 
gestures going on over his head that he broke at 
last into a prolonged wail and had to be carried 
hastily away. 

One of bon papers poetic works I can still re- 
member, of a very different and more endearing 
character. I was taken ill one morning while we 
were living with him in Paris and had been given 
to console me by a cousin of ours staying with us, 

the Duchesse de M , a delicious little purse in 

white, knitted silk, embroidered with pale blue for- 
get-me-nots. I told maman that I wished very 
much to show this purse to bon papa^ and that he 
should be informed of my illness. So I wrote him 
a note, and it was taken, with the purse, to his 



130 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

room. Presently the little parcel, much heavier, 
was brought back to me, and on opening my purse, 
I found inside it a centime, a Hard, a sou — every 
coin, in fact, up to and including a golden twenty- 
franc piece. And this is the poem that was sent 
with the purse : 

"Vous voulez jeune Princesse 
Que je me rends pres de vous? 
Que je baise de votre altesse 
Les pieds, les mains, et les genoux? 
Dans un instant je vais me rendre 
A vos desirs et a vos voeux, 
Mais vous me permettrez de prendre 
Deux baisers sur vos beaux yeux bleus." 

Such a grandfather, it must be admitted, had 
advantages as well as charms, yet our memory of 
him was always clouded by the one or two acts 
of cruel severity we had witnessed and of which 
I could not trust myself to speak. 



CHAPTER VIII 

LE MARQUIS DE PLOEUC 

IN the Chateau de Ker-Guelegaan, near Quim- 
per, lived an old friend of my family's, the 
Marquis de Ploeuc. The chateau was one of the 
oldest in Finisterre, an immense weather-beaten 
pile with a moat, a drawbridge, a great crenellated 
tower, and a turret that, springing from the first 
story, seemed, with its high-pointed roof, to be 
suspended in the air. Tall, dark trees rose in or- 
dered majesty about the chateau, and before it a 
wide band of lawn, called a tapis vert^ ran to the 
lodge-gates that opened on the highroad. From 
the upper windows one saw the blue Brittany sea. 
Along the whole length of the front fagade ran a 
stone terrace with seven wide steps; the windows 
of the salle d'honneur opened upon this, and the 
windows of the petit salon and the dining- and bil- 
liard-room. The furniture in the salle d'honneur 

131 



132 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

was of Louis XV white lacquer, court chairs, and 
tabourets de cour. There were tall mirrors all 
along the walls, and in the corners hung four great 
crystal chandeliers. The curtains and portieres 
were of a heavy, white silk that had become gray 
with time; they were scattered with bouquets of 
faded flowers, and caught up and looped together 
with knots of ribbon that had once been rose-col- 
ored. This glacial and majestic room was seldom 
used; it was in the petit salon^ leading from it, that 
guests usually sat. Here the chairs were carved 
along their tops with garlands of roses and ribbons 
so delicate that we children were specially forbid- 
den to touch them. The walls were hung with 
tapestries, at which I used often to gaze with de- 
light. One saw life-sized ladies and gentlemen 
dancing in stately rounds or laughing under trees 
and among flowers and butterflies. The great 
dining-room was paneled with dark wood carved 
into frames around the portraits of ancestors that 
were ranged along it. The coffers and the side- 
boards, where the silver stood, were of the same 
carved wood. I remember once going down to 



LE MARQUIS DE PLOEUC 133 

peep at the kitchen in the basement, and the dark 
immensity, streaming, as it were, with cooks, serv- 
ants, kitchen-boys, and maids, so bewildered and 
almost frightened me that I never ventured there 
again. 

The old marquis was a widower, and his mar- 
ried daughters, the Marquise de L and Mme. 

d'A , usually lived with him and his unmar- 
ried daughter Rosine, who became a nun. He 
was a splendid old gentleman, tall, with a noble 
carriage and severe, yet radiant, countenance. In 
the daytime he dressed always in gray coat and 
knee-breeches, with gray-and-black striped stock- 
ings and buckled shoes. At night his thick, white 
hair was gathered into a catogan^ — a little square 
black-silk bag, that is to say, — tied with a bow, 
and he wore a black-silk suit. On festal occa- 
sions, Christmas, Easter, or his fete-day, he be- 
came a magnificent figure in brocaded coat and 
white-satin waistcoat and knee-breeches; he had 
diamond shoe- and knee-buckles, diamond buttons 
on his waistcoat, and golden aiguillettes looped 
across his breast and shoulder. 



134 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

The diamond buckles he left to me, to be given 
to me on my lirst communion, and in his lifetime 
he had made for me a beautiful missal bound in 
white parchment and closed with a diamond and 
emerald clasp; inside were old illuminations. 

In his youth M. de Ploeuc had been an officer 
of the Chouans, and he was, of course, a passion- 
ate royalist. He always wore the Croix de St. 
Louis, a fleur-de-lis, with the little cross attached 
by blue ribbon. I asked him once if it was the 
same sort of decoration as my Grandfather de 
Rosval's, which, I said, was larger and was tied 
with red, and I remember the kindly and ironic 
smile of my old friend as he answered, "Oh, no; 
that is only the Legion d'honneur." 

Brittany had many marquises, some of them 
also old and distinguished; but he was the doyen 
of them all, and was always called simply le mar- 
quis. Any disputes or difficulties among the local 
noblesse were always brought to him for his de- 
cision, and on such occasions, if the discussions be- 
came heated, he would say, "Palsan bleu, mes 
seigneurs, il me semble que vous i^ous oubliez ici,'' 











-\' 



"He was a splendid 
old gentleman' 



LE MARQUIS DE PLOEUC 137 

using the dignified oath already becoming obsolete. 
His French was the old French of the court. He 
never, for instance, said, "Je vous remercie^'" but, 
"Je vous rends grace" 

Guests at Ker-Guelegaan arrived with their 
own horses and carriages to stay a month or more, 
and open house was kept. Breakfast was at six 
for those who did not take communion at the mass 
that was celebrated every morning in the chapel 
adjoining the chateau; these breakfasted on re- 
turning. It was permissible for ladies, at this 
early hour, to appear very informally in peignoirs 
and higoudics. Bigoudics are curl-papers or rib- 
bons. The marquis almost always took commun- 
ion, but he usually appeared at the six o'clock 
breakfast. After mass, once his correspondence 
dealt with, he played billiards with Rosine, the 
beautiful girl who became a nun in the order of 
the Carmelites, an order so strict that those who 
entered it died, to all intents and purposes, since 
their relatives never saw them again, and at that 
time were not even informed of their death. I see 
Rosine very clearly, bending over the billiard- 



138 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

table under her father's fond gaze, and I can also 
see her kneeling to pray in a corner of the petit 
salon. It was with such simplicity that any sus- 
picion of affectation or parade was out of the ques- 
tion. In the midst of a conversation she would 
gently ask to be excused and would go there apart 
and pray, sometimes for an hour. The ladies 
quietly gossiping over their embroidery-frames 
took it quite as a matter of course that Rosine 
should be praying near them. 

'Dejeuner was at ten, and it was then that one 
saw how strongly feudal customs still survived at 
Ker-Guelegaan. The marquis sat at the head of 
the table, and behind his chair stood his old serv- 
ant Yvon, dressed in Breton mourning-costume in 
memory of his defunct mistress; that is to say, in 
blue, black, and yellow. The other servants wore 
the livery of the house. Half-way down the ta- 
ble the white cloth ended, and the lower half had 
a matting covering. Here sat all the farmers of 
Ker-Guelegaan and their families, taking their 
midday meal with their master, while M. de 
Ploeuc and his guests and family sat above. We 




"/ 










'Guests at Ker-Guelegaan arrived 
with their own horses and carriages" 



LE MARQUIS DE PLOEUC 141 

children were usually placed at a little side-table. 
The meal aways began by M. de Ploeuc rising and 
blessing the company with two outstretched fin- 
gers, like a bishop, and he then recited a benedic- 
tion. He was always served first, another sur- 
vival of patriarchal custom, forced upon him, 
rather, for I remember his protesting against it and 
wishing my mother, who sat next him, to be served 
before him; but she would not hear of it. Dur- 
ing the repasts a violinist and a bimou-p\a.yeT, 
dressed in his Breton costume, played to us. 

After luncheon the ladies drove or rode or 
walked as the fancy took them, or, assem- 
bled in the petit salon, talked over their work. 
On hot days the blinds would be drawn down 
before the open windows, but in the angle of each 
window was fixed a long slip of mirror, so that 
from every corner one could see if visitors, wel- 
come or unwelcome, were driving up to the perron. 
Gouter, at three, consisted of bread, fruit, and 
milk, and dinner was at five. After that the la- 
dies and gentlemen assembled in the petit salon 
and talked, told ghost-stories and legends, or 



142 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

played games till the very early bedtime of the 
place and period. 

This was the train de vie at Ker-Guelegaan ; but 
my memories of the place center almost entirely 
around the figure of my old friend. I was his 
constant companion. When he rode out after 
luncheon to visit his farms, I would sit before him 
on his old horse Pluton. He never let Pluton gal- 
lop for fear of tiring him. "Do you see, ma pe- 
tite^' he would say, "Pluton is a comrade who has 
never failed me. He has earned a peaceful old 
age." We passed, in the wood behind the cha- 
teau, a monument of a Templar that frightened 
and interested me. He lay with his hands crossed 
over his sword, his feet stayed against a couchant 
hound, and I could not understand why he wore a 
knitted coat. My old friend burst out laughing 
when I questioned him, and said that I was as 
ignorant as a little carp, and that it was high time 
I went to the Sacre Coeur. He told me that the 
knitted coat was a coat of mail, and tried to instil 
a little history into my mind, telling me of the 
crusades and St. Louis; but I am afraid that my 




'Matnan wrote secretly 
to bon papa in Paris" 



LE MARQUIS DE PLOEUC 145 

mind soon wandered away to Pluton's gently 
pricked ears and to the wonders of the woods that 
surrounded us. We had walks together, too, and 
went one day to the sea-shore, where there was a 
famous grotto often visited by strangers. When 
we arrived at the black arch among the rocks and 
I heard it was called the Devil's Grot, I was ter- 
rified, clinging to M. de Ploeuc's hand and re- 
fusing to enter. 

"But why not, Sophie*? Why not?" he ques- 
tioned me. "I am here to take care of you, and 
there is no danger at all. See, Yann is lighting 
the torches to show us the way." 

"But the devil — the devil will get me," I whis- 
pered; "Jeannie told me so." 

Jeannie, indeed, was in the habit of punishing 
or frightening me by tales of the devil and his 
fork and tail and flames, and of how he would 
come and carry off disobedient little girls; so it 
was not to be wondered at that I feared to enter 
his grot. I imagined that he himself lurked there 
and would certainly carry me off, for I was well 
aware that I was often very disobedient. M. de 



146 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

Ploeuc sat down on a rock, took me on his knee, 
and said : 

"It is very wrong of Jeannie to fill your head 
with such nonsense, my little one. Nothing like 
her devil exists in the whole world, and you must 
pay no attention to her stories." 

He told me that the cavern was filled with beau- 
tiful stalactites, like great clusters of diamonds, 
and was so gentle and merry and reasonable that 
the devil was exorcised from my imagination for- 
ever, and I consented to enter the grotto. 

Yann and the guide, a young farmer of Ker- 
Guelegaan, led us in with their lighted torches, 
and I suddenly saw before me, strangely illum- 
inated, a somber, yet gorgeous, fairy-land. Dia- 
monds indeed I Pillars of diamonds rose from the 
rocky floor to the roof, and pendants hung in long 
clusters, glittering in inconceivable vistas of splen- 
dor. I was so dazzled and amazed that I gave 
the vaguest attention to M. de Ploeuc's explana- 
tion of the way in which the stalactites were 
formed among the rocks. Indeed, that night I 
could not sleep, still seeing diamond columns and 




'As a country gentleman he had 
Hved and as a country gentle- 
man he intended to go on living" 



LE MARQUIS DE PLOEUC 149 

pillars, and my dear old friend was full of self- 
reproach next day when he heard that during the 
night the Devil's Grot had given me a fever. 

Sometimes the Marquis de L accompanied 

us on our expeditions, and sometimes I was even 
left in his charge for an afternoon. I disliked this 
very much, for he had no amusing stories to tell 
me and walked very fast, and when my pace 
flagged, he would pause to look at me reproach- 
fully, tapping his foot on the ground, and crying 
out, as though I were one of his horses, "Get up! 
Get up!" 

M. de Ploeuc often took me, after lunch, into 
his little study and played the flute to me. I 
liked being in the study, but it rather frightened 
me to see my old friend remove his teeth before be- 
ginning to play. Their absence sadly altered his 
beautiful and stately countenance, and gave, be- 
sides, an odd, whistling timbre to his music. 
Still, I listened attentively, looking away now and 
then from his rapt, concentrated countenance to 
the tapis vert outside, where the cows were crop- 
ping the short grass, or glancing around rather 



150 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

shrinkingly at the headless bust of Marie Antoi- 
nette that stood on the mantelpiece. The head 
lay beside the bust, and there was, even to my 
childish imagination, a terrible beauty in the proud 
shoulders thus devastated. This was one of two 
such busts that had been decapitated by the Revo- 
lutionists. The other belonged, I think, later on, 
to the Empress Eugenie. When the marquis had 
finished his thin, melancholy airs, it was my turn 
to perform, and that I liked much better. I saw 
that he loved to hear the old Breton songs sung in 
my sweet, piping little voice, and it was especially 
pleasant, our music over, to be rewarded by being 
given chocolate pastils from a little enamel box 
that stood on the writing-desk. While I softly 
crunched the pastils M. de Ploeuc told me about 
the countries where the plant from which the choc- 
olate came grew. It was not at all common in 
Brittany at that time, and the pastils much less 
sweet than our modern bon bons. M. de Ploeuc 
also carried for his own delectation small violet 
and peppermint lozenges in a little gold box that 
he drew from his waistcoat-pocket, and these gave 



LE MARQUIS DE PLOEUC 151 

the pleasantest fragrance to his kiss. I often sat 
on with him in the study, looking at the pictures in 
the books he gave me while he read or wrote. He 
wore on the third finger of his right hand an odd 
black ring that had a tiny magnifying-glass fixed 
upon it, and while he read his hand moved gently 
across the page. 

I owe a great deal to this dear old friend. He 
took the deepest interest in my deportment, and 
mafnan was specially delighted that he should ex- 
tirpate from my speech provincial words and in- 
tonations. He entirely broke me of the bad hab- 
its of shrugging my shoulders and biting my 
nails, 

"Only wicked men and women bite their nails," 
he told me, and pointed out to me as a terrible 
warning the beautiful and coquettish Mme. de 

G , one of his guests, who had bitten her nails 

to the quick and quite ruined the appearance of 
her hands. 

"And is she so wicked"?" I asked. At which he 
laughed a little, and said that she must become so 
if she continued to bite her nails. He made me 



152 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

practise coming into and going out of a room until 
he was satisfied with my ease and grace. 

"Do you see, ma petite Sophie^'" he said, "a 
woman, when she walks well, is a goddess. Walk 
always as if on clouds, lightly and loftily. Or 
imagine that you are skimming over fields of 
wheat, and that not an ear must bend beneath 
your tread." 



CHAPTER IX 

LOCH-AR-BRUGG 

AND now I must tell of Loch-ar-Brugg, the 
center of my long life and the spot dearest 
to me upon earth. It was situated amidst the 
beautiful, wild, heathery country that stretched 
inland from Landemeau. I first saw it one day 
when I drove over from Landemeau with my 
father, and my chief recollection of this earliest 
visit is the deep shade under the high arch of the 
beech avenue and the aromatic smell of black cur- 
rants in an upper room where we were taken to 
see the liqueur in process of being made. I was 
given some to drink in a tiny glass, and I never 
smell or taste cassis that the scent, color, warmth, 
and sweetness of that long-distant day does not 
flash upon me. The liqueur was being made by 
the farmer's wife ; for part of the house, which, as 
I have said, papa at that time used only as a hunt- 

153 



154 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

ing-lodge, was inhabited by a Belgian farmer and 
his family. They were all seated at their midday 
meal when we arrived, and another thing I remem- 
ber is that the eldest daughter, a singularly beauti- 
ful young creature, with sea-green eyes and golden 
hair, was so much confused at seeing us that she 
put a spoonful of the custard she was eating 
against her cheek instead of into her mouth, 
greatly to my delight and to papa's. 

"Monsieur must excuse her," said the mother; 
"she is very timid." On which my father replied 
with some compliment which made all the family 
smile. I see them all smiling and happy, yet it 
must have been soon after that a tragedy befell 
them. News was brought to my father that the 
farmer had hanged himself. The poor man's rent 
was badly in arrears, but when he had last spoken 
to my father about it, the latter, as was always 
his wont in such circumstances, told him not to 
torment himself and that he could pay when he 
liked. Maman always suspected that my father's 
agent had threatened the poor fellow and that he 
had done away with himself in an access of 




On the road to Loch-ar-Brugg 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 157 

despondency. Papa, overcome with grief, hast- 
ened to Loch-ar-Brugg and remained there for a 
week with the mourning family. He gave them 
money to return to Belgium, and the beautiful 
young daughter became, we heard, a very skilful 
lace-maker. 

I was too young for this lugubrious event to 
cast a shadow on my dear Loch-ar-Brugg, but for 
many years tnatnan disliked the place. We still 
lived at Quimper or Landerneau, using Loch-ar- 
Brugg as a mere country resort ; but by degrees the 
ugly walls, nine feet high, that shut in the house 
from the gardens and shut out the view were 
pulled down, lawns were thrown into one another, 
great clumps of blue hydrangeas were planted all 
down the avenue, on each side, between each 
beech-tree, and the house, if not beautiful, was 
made comfortable and convenient. It was when 
we were really established at Loch-ar-Brugg that 
maman began to take the finances of the household 
into her capable hands. She reproached my 
father with his lack of ambition, and asked him 
frequently why he did not find an occupation, to 



158 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

which he always replied, "Ma chere, I have pre- 
cisely the occupations I care for." Mamati wrote 
secretly to bon papa in Paris and begged him to 
find a post for her husband there, and an excellent 
one was found at the treasury. But when the let- 
ter came, and maman^ full of joy, displayed it to 
him, papa cheerfully, but firmly, refused to con- 
sider for a moment any such change in his way of 
life. As a country gentleman he had lived and as 
a country gentleman he intended to go on living, 
and so indeed he continued to the end of his long 
life. I don't imagine that he made any difficulties 
as to tnaman taking over the financial manage- 
ment. He was quite incapable of saying no to a 
farmer who asked to have his rent run on unpaid, 
and realized, no doubt, that his methods would 
soon bring his family to ruin. So it was maman 
who received and paid out all the money. I see 
her now, sitting at the end of the long table in the 
kitchen, between two tall tallow candles, the peas- 
ants kneeling on the floor about her while she 
assessed their indebtedness and received their pay- 
ments. She was never unkind, but always strict. 




-'ij/--''-^'"" 



"My father, meeting a disconsolate 
peasant, . . . would surreptitiously 
slide the needful sum into his hand" 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 161 

and I was more than once the sympathetic witness 
of an incident that would greatly have incensed 
her. My father, meeting a disconsolate peasant 
going to an interview with la Mmtresse^ would 
surreptitiously slide the needful sum into his 
hand! What would maman have said had she 
known that the money so brightly and briskly paid 
to her had just come out of her husband's pocket! 
I was always a great deal with papa at Loch- 
ar-Brugg. At first I used to walk with him, — 
when he did not take me on his horse, — trotting 
along beside him, my hand in his. Later on, 
when Xante Rose had given me a dear little pony, 
I rode with him, and he had secretly made for me, 
knowing that maman would not approve, a very 
astonishing riding-costume. It had long, tightly 
fitting trousers, a short little jacket, like an Eton 
jacket, with a red-velvet collar, — red was my 
father's racing color, — and on my long golden 
curls a high silk hat. Maman burst out laughing 
when she saw me thus attired and was too much 
amused to be displeased. She herself rode a great 
deal at this time, but it was to hunting- and shoot- 



i62 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

ing-parties, from which she would return with her 
"bag" hanging from a sort of little pole fixed to 
her saddle; and I remember that one day she 
brought a strange beast that none of us ever saw in 
Brittany again, a species of armadillo {tatou) that 
her horse had trodden upon and killed. 

It was at Loch-ar-Brugg, on one of those early 
walks with papa, that my first vivid recollection 
of a landscape seen as a beautiful picture comes to 
me. We had entered a deep lane where gnarled 
old trees interlaced their fingers overhead and 
looked, with their twisted trunks, like crouching 
men or beasts; and as we advanced, it became so 
dark and mysterious that I was very much fright- 
ened and hung to papa's hand, begging to be taken 
out. He pointed then before us, and far, far 
away I saw a tiny spot of light. "Don't be fright- 
ened, Sophie," he said; "we are going toward the 
sunlight." So I kept my eyes fixed on the widen- 
ing spot, holding papa's hand very tightly in the 
haunted darkness ; and when we suddenly emerged, 
we were on the brink of a great gorge, and beyond 
were mountains, and below us lay a tranquil, 



o 

3 
TO 






LOCH-AR-BRUGG 165 

silver lake. I have never forgotten the strange, 
visionary impression, as of a beauty evoked from 
the darkness. Papa told me the story of the lake ; 
it was called "le lac des Korrigans." The Kor- 
rigans are Breton fairies — fairies, I think, more 
melancholy than those of other lands, and with 
something sinister and macabre in their supernat- 
ural activities. They danced upon the turf, it is 
true, in fairy-rings, but also, at night, they would 
unwind the linen from the dead in the church- 
yards and wash it in this lake. I felt the same 
fear and wonder on hearing this story that all my 
descendants have shown when they, in their turn, 
have come to hear it, and my little granddaughter, 
in passing near the lake with me, has often said, 
shrinking against me, "Je ne veux pas voir les 
blanchisseuses, Grand'mere." 

Unlike the marquis, who filled my mind, or 
tried to fill it, with the facts of nature and history, 
papa, on our walks, told me all these old legends, 
not as if he believed them, it is true, but as if they 
were stories quite as important in their way as the 
crusades ; and perhaps he was right. 



i66 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

Sometimes, when we were walking or riding, we 
met convicts who had escaped from the great 
prison at Brest. I was strictly forbidden ever to 
go outside the gates alone; but once, at evening, I 
slipped out and ran along the road to meet papa, 
who, I knew, was coming from Landerneau on 
foot. He was very much perturbed when he saw 
me emerge before him in the dusk, and drew me 
sharply to his side, and I then noticed that two 
men were following him. Presently they joined 
us and asked papa, very roughly, for the time. 

"It is nine, I think," said my father, eyeing 
them very attentively. 

"You think? Haven't you a watch, then?" 
said one of them. 

I suppose they imagined that the rifle papa car- 
ried over his shoulder was unloaded; but unsling- 
ing it in the twinkling of an eye, he said sternly: 

"Walk ahead. If you turn or stop, I shoot." 
They obeyed at once, and as they went along we 
heard a queer clink come from their ankles. 

"Escaped convicts," said papa in a low voice. 
"Poor devils I And you see, Sophie, how danger- 



r 
^ 



cx^^ 



/-^■•^V^ 




"Papa took out his hunting- 
flask and made him drink" 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 169 

ous it is for little girls to wander on the roads at 



to 

night." 



'to' 



On another occasion we found a wretched, ex- 
hausted man lying by the roadside, and papa 
stopped and asked him what was the matter. He 
must have felt the kindness of the face and voice, 
for he said : 

"I am an escaped convict, monsieur. For 
God's sake ! don't betray me. I am dying of hun- 
ger." Papa took out his hunting-flask and made 
him drink, and then, when we saw that the brandy 
had given him strength, he put some money into 
his hand and said: 

"It is against the law that I should help you, 
but I give you an hour before I raise the alarm. 
Go in that direction, and God be with you 1" 

The church-bells were rung everywhere, answer- 
ing one another from village to village when a 
convict was known to be at large; but on this occa- 
sion I know that my father did not fulfil his duty, 
the poor creature's piteous face had too much 
touched him. Once, too, when we children were 
walking with Jeannie along the highroad we 



lyo A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

caught sight of a beggar-woman sleeping in the 
ditch. In peering over cautiously to have a good 
look at her, we saw huge men's boots protruding 
from her petticoats, and, at the other end, a black 
beard, and we then made off as fast as our legs 
would carry us, realizing that the beggar-woman 
was a convict in disguise. At an inn not far from 
Loch-ar-Brugg there was a woman of bad charac- 
ter who sold these disguises to the escaped con- 
victs. 

Papa and my little brother and sister (Mara- 
quita was not then born) were not my only com- 
panions at Loch-ar-Brugg. The property of Ker- 
Azel adjoined ours, and I saw all my Laisieu cou- 
sins continually, dear, gentle France, domineering 
Jules, and the rest. There were nine of them. It 
was Jules who told us one day that he had been 
thinking over the future of France (the country, 
not his brother), and had come to the conclusion 
that we should all soon suffer from a terrible fam- 
ine. Famines had come before this, said Jules, so 
why not again*? It was only wise to be prepared 
for them; and what he suggested was that we 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 171 

should all accustom ourselves to eat grass and 
clover, as the cattle did. If it nourished cows, it 
would nourish us. All that was needed was a lit- 
tle good-will in order that we should become accus- 
tomed to the new diet. Jules was sincerely con- 
vinced of the truth of what he said ; but he was a 
tyrannous boy, and threatened us with beatings if 
we breathed a word of his plan to our parents. 
We were to feign at meals that we were not hun- 
gry, and to say that we had eaten before coming 
to the table. I well remember the first time that 
we poor little creatures knelt down on all fours 
in a secluded meadow and began to bite and 
munch the grass. We complained at once that we 
did not like it at all, and Jules, as a concession to 
our weakness, said that we might begin with 
clover, since it was sweeter. For some time we 
submitted to the ordeal, getting thinner and thin- 
ner and paler, growing accustomed, it is true, to 
our tasteless diet and never daring to confess our 
predicament; we were really afraid of the famine 
as well as of Jules. At last our parents, seri- 
ously alarmed, consulted the good old doctor, as 



172 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

nothing could be got from us but stout denials of 
hunger. He took me home with him, for I was 
his special pet, and talked gravely and gently to 
me, reminding me that I was now eight years old 
and of the age of reason, going to confession and 
capable of sin. It was a sin to tell lies, and if I 
would tell him the truth, he would never betray 
my confidence. Thus adjured, I began to cry, 
and confessed that we had all been eating nothing 
but grass and clover. The doctor petted and con- 
soled me, told me that it was all folly on the part 
of Jules, and that he would set it right without 
any one knowing that I had told him. He kept 
his promise to me. It was as if by chance he 
found us all in our meadow next day, on all fours, 
munching away. Jules sprang up, sulky and ob- 
stinate. 
• "Yes; we are eating grass and clover," he said, 
"and we are quite accustomed to it now and like it 
very much, and we shall be better off than the rest 
of you when the famine comes." 

The doctor burst out laughing, and his laugh- 
ter broke the spell Jules had cast upon us. He 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 173 

told us that not only was there no probability of a 
famine, no possibility even, France being a coun- 
try rich in food, but that even were there to be a 
famine, we should certainly all be dead before it 
came if we went on eating as the cattle did, since 
we were not accommodated with the same diges- 
tive apparatus as they. He described to us this 
apparatus and our own, and at last even Jules, 
who was as thin and as weary as the rest of us, was 
convinced, and glad to be convinced. It was not 
till many years afterward that we told our parents 
the story. 

One day we children were all in a deep lane — 
perhaps the same that had frightened me years be- 
fore — when, at a turning, the most inconceivable 
monster towered above us in the gloom. We rec- 
ognized it in a moment as a camel (a camel in 
Brittany!), and with it came a band of Gipsies, 
with dark skins, flashing teeth, bright handker- 
chiefs, and ear-rings. Our alarm was not dimin- 
ished when we saw that they led, as well as the 
camel, two thin performing bears. But as we 
emerged into the light with the chattering, fawn- 



174 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

ing crowd, alarm gave way to joyous excitement. 
The camel and the bears were under perfect con- 
trol, and the Gipsies were not going to hurt us. 
They asked if they might make the bears dance 
for us, and we ran to show them the way to Loch- 
ar-Brugg. Ma?nan, in her broad garden hat, was 
walking in the beech-avenue, and came at once to 
forbid the Gipsies to enter, as they were preparing 
to do; but as we supplicated that we should be 
allowed to see the bears dance, she consented to 
allow the performance to take place in the high- 
road before the grille. We sat about on the grass ; 
the camel towered against the sky, gaunt, tawny, 
and melancholy; and the bears, armed with 
wooden staffs, went through their clumsy, reluc- 
tant tricks. Maman^ from within the grille^ sur- 
veyed the entertainment with great disfavor, and 
it lost its charm for us when we heard her say: 
"How wretchedly thin and miserable the poor 
creatures look ! They must be dying of hunger." 
We then became very sorry for the bears, too, and 
glad to have them left in peace, and while we dis- 
tributed sous to the Gipsies, maman went to the 




'A woman of bad character, who sold 
these disguises to escaped convicts" 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 177 

house and returned with a basket of broken bread 
and meat, which she gave to the famished beasts. 
How they snatched and devoured it, and how 
plainly I see maman standing there, the deep green 
vault of the avenue behind her, the clumps of blue 
hydrangeas, her light dress, her wide-brimmed gar- 
den hat, and her severe, solicitous blue eyes as she 
held out the bread to the hungry bears I 

A great character at Loch-ar-Brugg was the 
cure. It was he who had baptized me, for I was 
baptized not at Quimper, but in the little church 
of St. Eloi that stood at the foot of the Loch-ar- 
Brugg woods and had been in the Kerouguet fam- 
ily for generations. During my earliest years 
there he was our chaplain, inhabiting one of the 
pavilions in the garden with his old servant; later 
on he was given the living of Plougastel, some 
miles away, and my father had to persuade him to 
accept it, for he was very averse to leaving Loch- 
ar-Brugg and our family. Still, even at Plou- 
gastel we saw him constantly ; he drove over nearly 
every day in his little pony-trap, and officiated 
every Sunday at the seven o'clock mass at St. Eloi. 



178 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

What a dear, honest fellow he was, and what 
startling sermons I have heard him preach I Once 
he informed his congregation that they would all 
be damned like Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Fene- 
lonl This threat, pronounced in Breton, was es- 
pecially impressive, and how he came by the two 
ill-assorted names I cannot imagine, for he was 
nearly as ignorant of books as his flock. He was 
devoted to my father body and soul, being the son 
of one of his farmers. They were great comrades. 
Whenever my father had had a good day's shoot- 
ing he would go to the pavilion and cry: "Come 
to dinner I There are woodcocks." And the 
cure never tailed to come. I see him now, with 
his rustic, rugged face, weather- tanned, gay, and 
austere. One of my first memories is of the small, 
square neck ornament {rabat) that the clergy 
wear, — a bavette we children called them, — 
stitched round with white beads. I longed for 
these beads, and when he took me on his knee I 
always fixed my eyes upon them. Unattainable 
indeed they seemed, but one day, noticing the in- 
tentness of my gaze, he questioned me, and I was 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 179 

able to express my longing, "But you shall have 
the beads!" he cried, touched and delighted. "I 
have two rabats, and one is old and past wearing. 
Nothing is simpler than to cut off the beads for 
you, my little Sophie," 

His performance was even better than his prom- 
ise, for he brought me a bagful of the beads, col- 
lected from among his cure friends, and for days I 
was blissfully occupied in making chains, rings, 
and necklaces. Some of these ornaments sur- 
vived for many years. 

The cure was not at all happy in the presence 
of fine people. "Je me sauveV he would exclaim 
if such appeared, and he would make off to the 
garden, where he was altogether at home, true son 
of the soil that he was. Here he would gird up 
his soutane over his homespun knee-breeches, open 
his coarse peasant's shirt on his bare chest, and 
prune and dig and plant; and when he took a task 
in hand it went quickly. One of my delights was 
when he put me into the wheelbarrow and trun- 
dled me off to Ker-Eliane to dig up ferns for 
maman's garden. 



i8o A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

He, too, told me many legends. The one of 
St. Eloi especially interested me. St. Eloi was 
the son of a blacksmith and helped his father at 
the forge in the tiny hamlet called after him. 
One day as they were working, a little child came 
riding up, mounted on a horse so gigantic that four 
men could not have held him. "Will you shoe 
my horse, good friends'?" said the child, — who of 
course was VEnfant Jesus, — very politely. "His 
shoe is loose, and his hoof will be hurt." The 
father blacksmith looked with astonishment and 
indignation at the horse, and said that he could 
not think ol shoeing an animal of such a size; but 
the son, St. Eloi, said at once that he would do his 
best. So VEnfant Jesus slid down, and took a 
seat on the talus in front of the smithy, and St. 
Eloi at once neatly unscrewed the four legs of the 
horse and laid them down beside the enormous 
body. At this point in the story I always cried 
out: 

"But, Monsieur le Cure, did it not hurt the poor 
horse to have its legs unscrewed?" 

And the cure, smiling calmly, would reply : 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 181 

"Not in the least. You see, this was a miracle, 
my little Sophie." 

So St. Eloi was able to deal with the great hoofs 
separately, and when all was neatly done, the legs 
were screwed on again; and the child remounted, 
and said to St. Eloi's father before he rode away: 

"You are a little soured with age, my friend. 
Your son here is very wise. Listen to him and 
take his advice in everything, for it will be good." 

It was no doubt on account of this legend that 
all the horses through all the country far and near 
were brought to the church of St. Eloi once a year 
to be blessed by the cure. This ceremony was 
called le Bapthjie des Chevaux. The horses, 
from plow-horses to carriage-horses and hunters, 
were brought and ranged round the church in 
groups of fours and sixes. At the widely opened 
western door the cure stood, holding the gouplllon^ 
or holy-water sprinkler, and the horses were slowly 
led round the church, row after row, seven times, 
and each time that they passed before him the cure 
sprinkled them with holy water. After this in- 
itial blessing the cure took up his stand within be- 



i82 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

side the christening-font, and the horses were led 
into the church, — I so well remember the dull thud 
and trampling of their feet upon the earthen floor, 
— and the cure, with holy water from the font, 
made the sign of the cross upon each large, inno- 
cent forehead. Finally the tail of each horse was 
carefully cut off, and all the tails hung up in the 
church together, to be sold for the benefit of the 
church at the end of the year, before le Bapteme 
des Chevaux took place again. This touching 
ceremony still survives, but the horses are only led 
round the church and blessed, not brought inside. 

The Church of St. Eloi was very ancient, and 
adorned with strange old statues of clumsily 
carved stone painted in garish colors. One was of 
a Christ waiting for the cross, His hands tied be- 
fore Him. It was a hideous figure, the feet and 
hands huge and distorted, the eyes staring like 
those of a doll; yet it had an impressive look of 
suffering. There were no benches in the church 
except for our family, near the choir. The peas- 
ants, the men on one side, the women on the other, 
knelt on the bare earth during the office. They 



/ 




"A great character at Loch- 
ar-Brugg was the cur^" 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 185 

had used, always, when they entered the church, 
to pass round before les mmtres^ bowing before 
them; but even my mother objected to this, and 
the cure was told to give out from the pulpit that 
les maitres were no longer to be bowed to in 
church, where there was only one master. Ma- 
?7ian^ however, did not at all like it that my 
father should insist on us children kneeling with 
the peasants, and it was the one subject on which 
I remember a difference of opinion between my 
grandfather Rosval and papa. But the latter was 
firm, and Ernest on the side of the men, Eliane 
and I on the side of the women, we knelt through 
mass. This was no hardship to us, for the kind . 
peasants spread their skirts for our little knees and 
regaled us all through the service with crepes. 

Crepes seem to be present in nearly all my 
Breton memories. The peasants made them for 
us when we went to visit them in their cottages, 
and it would have hurt their feelings deeply had 
we refused them. We children delighted in these 
visits not only on account of the crepes^ but on ac- 
count of the picturesque interest of these peasant 



i86 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

interiors. The one living-room had an earthen 
floor and a huge chimney-place of stone, often 
quaintly carved, and so large that chairs could be 
set within it about the blazing logs. The room 
was paneled, as it were, with beds that looked, 
when their sliding wooden doors were closed, like 
tall wardrobes ranged along the walls. They 
were usually of dark old wood and often beauti- 
fully carved. A narrow space between the tops of 
these beds and the ceiling allowed some air (but 
what air!) to reach the sleepers, and, within, the 
straw was piled high, and the mattress and feather 
bed were laid upon it. It was quite customary for 
father, mother, and three or four children to sleep 
in one bed, several generations often occupying a 
room, as well as the servants, who were of the same 
class as their masters. The beds were climbed 
into by means of a carved chest that stood beside 
them. These were called huches, and contained 
the heirloom costumes, a store of bread, and the 
Sunday shoes I Potatoes were kept under the bed. 
In the window stood the table where the family 
and servants all ate together, and above it hung. 




■^'r^ 



"All the Breton women smoked " 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 189 

suspended by a pulley and string from the ceiling, 
a curious contrivance for holding spoons. It was 
a sort of wooden disk, and the spoons were held 
in notches cut round the edge ; it was lowered when 
needed, and each person took a spoon. A great 
earthenware bowl of creamy milk stood in the 
center of the table, and with each mouthful of por- 
ridge, or fare^ the spoons were dipped, in commun- 
ity, into the milk. Fare was a sort of thick por- 
ridge made of maize, allowed to cool in a large 
round cake, and cut in slices when cold. It was 
one of the peasants' staple dishes, and another was 
the porridge made of oatmeal, rye, or buckwheat, 
served hot, with a lump of butter. For breakfast 
they all drank cafe au lait^ strange coffee boiled 
with the milk; fortunately milk and butter were 
plentiful. Of the hygienic habits of the peasants 
at this time the less said the better; a very minor 
detail was that the long hair of the men and the 
closely coiffed tresses of the women swarmed with 
vermin, and after every visit we paid, our heads 
were always carefully examined. One peasant, 
I remember, a good fellow, Paul Simur by name, 



190 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

of whom my father was specially fond, was so 
dirty and unwashed that a sort of mask of dirt had 
formed upon his features. One day, at a hunting- 
party, papa called to Paul to come and sit beside 
him, and the other huntsmen, with singular bad 
taste, began to make fun of poor Paul, who sat 
much abashed, with hanging head. Papa affec- 
tionately laid an arm about his neck and defended 
him, until his friends finally cried out that they 
wagered he would not kiss him. At this, although 
he confessed afterward to the most intense repug- 
nance, he at once kissed Paul heartily. Poor Paul 
was quite overcome. He came to my father after- 
ward with tears in his eyes and said, standing be- 
fore him and gazing at him : 

"Oh, mon mmtre, que je faimel'''' 

"And why don't you ever wash your face, 
Paul*?" papa asked him then, and Paul explained 
that he had never been taught to wash and was 
afraid it would seriously hurt him to begin. Papa 
undertook to teach him. He got soap and soda 
and hot water and lathered Paul, gently and 
firmly, until at last his very agreeable features 




y 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 193 

were disinterred. Paul was perfectly delighted, 
and his face shone with cleanliness ever after. 

A special friend of mine among the peasants 
was dear old Keransiflan, the lodge-keeper. I 
was fond of joining him while he tended the road 
in front of the lodge-gates and sitting on his wheel- 
barrow with him to talk to him while he ate his 
midday meal. This consisted of a huge slice of 
black bread thickly spread with butter, and it 
seemed to me that no bread and butter had ever 
looked so good. 

One day he must have seen how much I longed 
for it, for he said, holding out the slice, "Demoi- 
selle^ en veux-tti?" I did not need to be asked 
twice, and can still see the great semicircle that I 
bit into the slice, and I was happily munching 
when maman appeared at the lodge-gates. She 
was very much displeased, and mainly that I 
should be devouring poor Keransiflan's luncheon, 
and she rated me so soundly that the kind old man 
interceded for me, saying, "Notre maitresse^ c'est 
moi qui lui Vai donned I think that maman 
must have seen that it gave him great pleasure to 



194 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

share his bread with me ; at all events, Keransiflan 
and I, sitting on our wheelbarrow, were allowed to 
go on eating in peace. 

But the peasants were a hard, harsh race and 
pitiless in their dealings toward one another. 
Their treatment of their old people was terrible. 
If an old mother, past work, had no money, she 
was ruthlessly turned out to beg. One sometimes 
saw such an old woman sitting on a talus^ her piti- 
ful bundle of rags beside her, helpless and stupe- 
fied. I remember a story that was told me by one 
of my servants about such an old woman that she 
had known. She had four hundred francs, and 
was cared for in the family of one son until it was 
spent, when she was turned out. Another son 
more kindly took her in; but his wife was a hard 
woman, and though she finally consented to accept 
the useless old mother into the household, she 
grudged every sou spent upon her. Thus, though 
the only two joys remaining her in life were snuff 
and coffee, only two sous a week was allowed her 
for tobacco, and as for coffee, she was given never 
a drop. When she was dying she told the servant 



LOCH-AR-BRUGG 195 

from whom I had the story that what made her 
suffer most had been to sit by in the morning and 
smell the delicious odor of the coffee as the others 
drank it. This has always seemed to me a heart- 
piercing story. All the Breton women smoked, by 
the way, and pipes, and in a curious fashion; for 
the bowl was turned downward, though why, I do 
not know. 



CHAPTER X 

THE PARDON AT FOLGOAT 

1WAS taken while I was a child at Loch-ar- 
Brugg to the famous Pardon de Folgoat^ to 
which people came from all Brittany. In Folgoat 
was the summer residence of Anne de Bretagne, 
and in the vast hall of the chateau she had held 
her audiences. The chateau is now the presby- 
tery, and is opposite the church, of which there is 
a legend. A poor child, Yann Salacin, who was 
devoid of reason, spent hours every day before the 
altar of the Virgin, which he decorated with the 
wild flowers that he gathered in the fields, and 
wandered in the forest, swinging on the branches 
of the trees, always singing Ave Maria, the only 
words he was ever heard to pronounce. He 
begged for food from door to door and slept in 
the barns. The peasants became impatient with 
him and began to whisper that he was possessed 

196 



THE PARDON AT FOLGOAT 197 

of an evil spirit, and at last they drove him out 
of the village. The cure, who was a good man, 
missed him in the church, sought vainly for him, 
and at last heard what had happened. He was 
filled with indignation, and told the peasants that 
they had committed a crime. Then he set out to 
look for poor Yann, and found him at last in a 
distant forest, dead with hunger. He brought the 
body back to Folgoat and buried it near the 
church, and one day he saw that a tall white lily 
had grown up from the grave; when he opened 
the grave he found that the lily sprang from the 
lips of the little innocent, and on the petals of the 
flower one could read in letters of gold Ave Maria. 
This legend is believed in all Brittany, and a 
stained-glass window in the church tells the story. 

Behind the church is the Well of Love, so called 
because not a day passes that lovers do not come to 
test their fate by trying to float pins upon the sur- 
face of the water. If the pins float, all promises 
well, and they go away happy. Astute ones 
slightly grease the pins, and thus aid destiny. 

But to return to the pardon. I remember that 



198 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

on this occasion an old cook in the family had per- 
mission to start two or three days before the par- 
don^ so that she might go all the way on her knees, 
and during those days one met many such devout 
pilgrims making their way on their knees along 
the dusty roads. Some of them came from far 
distances. We children were called before dawn 
on the August morning, and it was a sleepy, half- 
bewildered dressing by candle-light. As a closed 
carriage made me sick, I was put into the coupe 
with papa and maman. Eliane, Ernest, their 
nurses, and all the other servants, followed in a 
sort of omnibus, and behind them came all the 
horses, trotting gaily along the road to share in 
the blessings of this great day of the Assumption 
of the Virgin. The horses of Brittany, it will be 
conceded, are a specially favored race. Although 
I was in the coupe and had all the freshness of the 
early air to invigorate me, I remember of the jour- 
ney from Loch-ar-Brugg to Folgoat only that I 
was deplorably sick, and the greatest inconven- 
ience to my parents. Fortunately, I was restored 
the moment I set my feet upon the ground. 




"Je me sauve," he would exclaim 



THE PARDON AT FOLGOAT 201 

We were to be entertained for the day at Fol- 
goat by the cure, and to lunch with him and with 
the bishops at the presbytery; but we were already 
ravenously hungry, so, although papa and maman 
must continue to fast until after taking commun- 
ion at the early service, we children had a splendid 
picnic breakfast in the presbytery garden, and a 
jellied breast of lamb is my first recollection of the 
day at Folgoat! Then we went out to see the 
great festival. Seventy-iive years or more have 
passed since that day, and it still lives in my mind 
with a beauty more than splendid, a divine beauty. 
In the vast plain, under the vast, blue sky, six bish- 
ops, glittering with gold and precious stones, cele- 
brated mass simultaneously at six great altars 
among thousands of worshipers. It was a sea of 
color under the August sun, and the white coiffes 
of the women were like flocks of snowy doves. 
There was an early mass, and the high mass at 
eleven. When this was over, we assembled at the 
presbytery to lunch with the bishops. The table 
was laid in Anne de Bretagne's council-chamber, 
its stone walls covered with archaic figures, and it 



202 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

must have been a picturesque sight to see the bish- 
ops sitting in all their splendor against that an- 
cient background; but what I most remember are 
the stories they told of Louis XI and his misdeeds, 
which seemed to me more interesting and more 
cruel than the Arabian Nights and Ali Baba and 
his forty thieves. In the church itself was shown 
a superbly carved bench where, it was said, while 
praying, he ordered with a nod the death of a 
Breton noble who had refused to do him homage. 
When we went into the church after lunch to see 
this bench, I sat down on it, and my long golden 
curls were caught in the claws of the interlaced 
monsters on the back, and I hurt myself so much 
in wrenching myself free that I hated still more 
fiercely the wicked king who condemned men to 
death while he prayed, O the horrid monster I 

Then at three came the great procession. First 
went the six bishops, mitered and carrying their 
croziers; then followed the children of the no- 
blesse^ we among them, all in white, with white 
wreaths on our heads; then all the vast multitude, 
twenty or thirty abreast, singing canticles, a stu- 



THE PARDON AT FOLGOAT 203 

pendous sight and sound, all marching round the 
plain, from altar to altar, under the burning sun. 
I remember little after that. The Marquis de 
Ploeuc was there, his hair tied in the catogan^ and 
wearing his black silk suit: I think he must have 
lunched with us at the cure's. It was arranged 
that he and his two eldest daughters were to drive 
back to Loch-ar-Brugg with maman and spend 
some days with us, and so, though I must have 
been very tired, I was to ride back beside papa on 
my pony, which had been duly blessed. It was 
already night when we started, and what a won- 
derful ride it was I I remember no fatigue. I 
still wore my white dress, and inaman swathed my 
head and shoulders in a white lace shawl, and all 
' the way back to Loch-ar-Brugg papa told me 
stories of hunts, of fairies, of saints, and of es- 
caped convicts. Every group of trees, every rock, 
every turning in the road, had its legend or its ad- 
venture. 



CHAPTER XI 

BONNE MAMAN's DEATH 

WE were at Ouimper when bonne maman 
died. She had been failing for some 
time, and her character, until then so gentle, had 
altered. Mere trifles disquieted her, and she be- 
came fretful, alarmed, and even impatient. She 
seemed so little in her big bed, and, when I wanted 
to climb up beside her, after my wont, she signed 
to Jeannie to take me away and said that it tired 
her too much to see children and that the air of a 
sick-room was not good for them. "Tell my 
daughter — tell her. They must not come I" she 
repeated several times in a strange, shrill voice. 
I slid down from the bed, I remember, abashed 
and disconcerted, and while I longed to see my 
dear bonne maman as I had known her, I was 
afraid of this changed bonne maman; and it hurt 

204 



BONNE MAMAN'S DEATH 205 

me more for her than for myself that she should 
be so changed. 

But one day when maman was in the room, she 
caught sight of me hanging about furtively in the 
passage, and called out gently to me to go away, 
that bonne maman was tired and was going to 
sleep. Then a poor little voice, no longer shrill, 
very trembling, came from the bed, saying: "Let 
her come, Eliane. It will not hurt me. I want 
to see her for a moment." 

I approached the bed, walking on tiptoe; the 
curtains were drawn to shade bonne maman from 
the sunlight, and I softly came and stood within 
them. O my poor bonne maman! I could 
hardly recognize her. She seemed old — old and 
shrunken, and her eyes no longer smiled. She 
looked at me so fixedly that I was frightened, and 
she said to maman: 

"Lift her up on the bed. I want to kiss her." 
She took my hand then, and looked at my little 
finger as she always used to do, and said: "I 
see that you have been very good with your 
mother, but that you don't obey your nurse. You 



2o6 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

must always be obedient. You understand me, 
don't you, Sophie*? Do you say your prayers*?" 

"Yes, bonne majnan^' I answered. 

"Have you said them this morning*?" 

"No, bonne maman.'' 

"Say them now." 

I made the sign of the cross and said the follow- 
ing prayer, which I repeated morning and evening 
every day, and with slightly altered nomencla- 
ture, my children and grandchildren have re- 
peated, as I did, until the age of reason: ''Mon 
Dieu^ bless me and bless and preserve grand-pere^ 
bonne maman^ maman^ papa, my sisters, my 
brother. Tiny" [this was my little dog], "Ghis- 
laine, France, Kerandraon, all my family, and 
make me very good. Amen." When I had 
finished, bonne fnatnan drew me gently to her, 
pressed me in her arms, and kissed me on my eyes. 

After this, for how many days I do not remem- 
ber, everything became very still in the house. 
The servants whispered when they had to speak, 
and the older people, when they met us, told us 
gently to go into the garden and to be very quiet. 



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BONNE MAMAN'S DEATH 209 

We did not see maman or papa at all. My tante 
de Laisieu was with us, and dear France. Bon 
papa arrived from Paris. One morning was very 
sunny and beautiful, and as I played with Eliane 
in the garden I forgot the oppression that weighed 
upon us and began to sing to her a Breton song 
which Jeannie had taught me. These were the 
words : 

Le Roy vient demain au chateau, 
"Ecoute moi bien, ma Fleurette, 
Tu regarderas bien son aigrette !" 

"Je regarderai," dit Fleurette, 

"Pour bien reconnaitre le Roy ! 
Mes yeux ne verront que toi, 
Et mon coeur n'aimera que toi." 

While I sang I looked up at bonne maman' s win- 
dow, for I knew how fond she was of hearing me. 
The window was shut, and this was unusual; 
so I sang the louder, that she should hear me, of 
Fleurette and le Roy. Then France and one of 
the servants came running out of the house, and 
I saw that both had been crying, and France put 
his arm about me while the servant said, "Made- 



210 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

moiselle must not sing." And France whispered: 
"You will wake bonne maman. Go into the 
orchard, dear Sophie. There you will not be 
heard." In the evening papa came for us in the 
nursery, and I saw that he, too, had been crying. 
I had never before seen tears in his dear eyes. 
He took us up to maman' s room. All the blinds 
were drawn down, but I could see her lying on 
her bed, in her white woolen peignoir^ her arms 
crossed behind her head, her black jet rosary lying 
along the sheet beside her. We kissed her, one 
after the other, and I saw the great tears rolling 
down her cheeks. 

"Maman — is bonne maman very ill*?" I whis- 
pered. I felt that something terrible had hap- 
pened to us all. 

"My little girl," said maman, "your poor bonne 
maman does not suffer any more. She is very 
happy now with the angels and le bon Dieu^' 
but maman was sobbing as she spoke. 

I knew death only as it had come to one of my 
little birds that lived in the round cage hung in the 
nursery-window, and I was very much frightened 




We children had a splendid picnic breakfast 



BONNE MAMAN'S DEATH 213 

when papa said: "I am going to take Sophie to 
your mother's room, Eliane. She is old enough 
to understand." But I went with him obediently, 
holding his hand. Outside bonne maman's door 
he paused and stooped to kiss me and said: "I 
know how much you loved your bonne maman, 
Sophie, and I want you to say good-by to her, 
for you will never see her again. She loved you 
so much, my little darling, and you shall be the 
last one to kiss her." The room was all black, 
and in the middle stood the bed. Beside it, on a 
table, a little chapelle had been made with a great 
silver cross and candelabra with lighted tapers. 
A bunch of fresh box stood in a goblet of holy 
water. Bonne maman lay with her arms stretched 
out before her, the hands clasped on her black 
wooden crucifix with a silver Christ that had al- 
ways hung upon her wall. Her hair was not 
dressed, but drawn up from her forehead and cov- 
ered with a mantilla of white silk Spanish lace, 
which fell down over her shoulders on each side. 
I stood beside her holding papa's hand. Her pro- 
file was sharply cut against the blackness, and I 



214 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

had never before seen how beautiful it was. Her 
eyes were closed, and she smiled tranquilly. I 
felt no longer any fear; but when papa lifted me 
in his arms so that I might kiss bonne maman and 
my lips touched her forehead, a great shock went 
through me. How cold her forehead was! O 
my poor bonne maman! Even now, after all the 
lusters that have passed over me, I feel the cold of 
that last kiss. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE JOURNEY FROM BRITTANY 

IT was not long after bonne maman's death 
that we left Brittany and went to Paris to live 
with bon papa. I remember every detail of this 
my first long journey. The day began with a 
very early breakfast, which we all had together 
in the dining-room and at which we had the great 
treat of drinking chocolate. Then came the com- 
plicated business of stowing us all away in our 
capacious traveling-carriage. It was divided into 
three compartments. First came what was called 
the coupe., with windows at the sides and a large 
window in front from which we looked out past 
the coachman's red-stockinged legs and along the 
horses' backs to where the postilion jounced mer- 
rily against the sky in a red Breton costume like 
the coachman's, his long hair tied behind with 
black ribbon, a red jockey's cap on his head, and 

215 



2i6 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

black shoulder-knots with jet aiyuUlettes. After 
the coupC\ and communicating with it by a tiny 
passage, though it had doors of its own, was an- 
other compartment for maids, nurses, and children, 
and behind that another and larger division for all 
the other servants. On the top were seats be- 
side the coachman, and papa spent most of the day 
up there smoking. The luggage, carried on the 
top, was covered by a great leather covering, 
buckled down all over it, called a bache. The 
horses were post-horses, renewed at every post. 
It was decided that I was to go in the coupe with 
maman^ papa, and little Maraquita, as I should 
get more fresh air there. I wore, I remember, a 
red cashmere dress made out of a dress of 
mamarCs. The material had been brought from 
India and was bordered with a design of palm- 
leaves. Indeed, this red cashmere must have pro- 
vided me with a succession of dresses, for I re- 
member that when I made my entree at the ^acre 
CcBur years afterwards, the bishop, visiting the 
convent, stopped, smiling, at my bench, and said, 
"Why, this is a little Republican, is it not*?" 



THE JOURNEY FROM BRITTANY 217 

Eliane and I both wore capulets on our heads. 
These were squares of white cloth that fell to the 
shoulders and that folded back from the forehead 
and fastened under the chin with bands of black 
velvet, a Spanish head-dress. Our cloaks were 
the full cloaks, gathered finely around the neck 
and shoulders, that maman had made for us, 
copied from the peasants' cloaks, of foulard for 
summer and wool for winter. Little Maraquita, 
who spent most of the three days' journey on ma- 
man's knees, wore, as always until she was seven 
or eight, white and pale blue, the Virgin's colors, 
as she had been vouee au bleu et au blanc after a 
terrible accident that had befallen her in infancy. 
She had fallen into the fire at Landerneau, and her 
head and forehead had been badly burned, and 
maman had thus dedicated her to the Virgin with 
prayers that she might not be disfigured — prayers 
that were more than answered, for Maraquita be- 
came exquisitely beautiful. Papa, I may add 
here, had many friends and connections in Spain; 
hence my little sister's name, and hence our 
capulets. 



2i8 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

Eliane and Ernest traveled in the second com- 
partment with their nurses, Eliane carrying Tiny 
and her huge doll, and Ernest, unfortunately for 
our peace of mind, a drum of mine that I had 
given him and upon which he beat the drum- 
sticks hour after hour. Maman, in the coupe^ 
cried out at intervals that it was intolerable to 
hear such an incessant noise and that the child 
must really, now, be made to stop; but papa al- 
ways mildly soothed her, saying: "Let him play. 
It keeps him distracted; he would probably be 
crying otherwise." So Ernest continued to roll 
his drum. In the coupe I was fully occupied in 
playing at horses. Real leather reins had been 
fixed at each side of the front window, passing 
under it so that, looking out over the horses' 
haunches, I had the delightful illusion, as I 
wielded the reins, of really driving them. I do 
not remember that I was sick at all on the first day. 
The country was mountainous, and at every steep 
hill we all got out and walked down, and this also, 
probably helped to preserve me. One feature of 
the Brittany landscape of those days stands out 




The postilion sounded his horn 



->- ^'^ 



THE JOURNEY FROM BRITTANY 221 

clearly in my memory, the tall, sinister-looking 
telegraph-poles that stood, each one just visible 
to the last, on the heights of the country. When 
I say telegraph it must not be imagined that they 
were our modern electric installations, although 
so they were called. These were of a very primi- 
tive and very ingenious construction. At the top 
of each pole, by means of the projecting arm that 
gave it the look of a gallows, immense wooden 
letters were hung out, one after the other; these 
letters were worked by means of wires that passed 
down the poles into the little hut at its foot. 
Each wire at the bottom had a label with its 
corresponding letter, and the operator in the hut, 
by pulling the wire, pulled the letter into its 
place at the top of the pole, and was thus able 
laboriously to spell out the message he had to con- 
vey and to make it visible to the operator at the 
next post, who passed it on to the next. These 
clumsy telegrams could be sent, as far as I re- 
member, only at certain hours of the day, and I 
think that it must have been during a wayside halt 
on this journey that I visited a hut with papa and 



222 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

had the system explained to me and saw a message 
being sent, for I remember the clatter and shaking 
as the big letters overhead were pulled into place. 
I do not know whether this method of communi- 
cation was used all over France, but one or two of 
the old poles still survive in Brittany. 

Our first stop that day was at Quimperle. The 
postilion, as we approached a town or village, 
sounded his horn, and what excitement it caused 
in these quiet little places when we came driving 
up, and how all the people crowded round us I 

The inn at Quimperle was called the Hotel du 
Trefle Noir, and though very primitive, the thatch 
showing through the rafters in the roof of the 
immense kitchen-dining-room, it was scrupulously 
clean. We all sat down together at the long 
table, servants, coachman, postilion, and all, and 
the dejeuner served to us by the good landlady 
was fit to put before a king. I remember maman 
laughing and asking her why she served the sal- 
mon and, afterward, a heaping golden mound 
of fried potatoes, on a great plank, and the land- 
lady saying that she had no dishes large enough. 



THE JOURNEY FROM BRITTANY 223 

There was a turkey, too, stuffed with chestnuts 
and of course crepes and cream. Next door to 
us, in a smaller room, a band of commercial 
travelers were also lunching, and as we finished 
each course it was carried in to those cheerful 
young fellows, whose hurrahs of joy added zest 
to our own appetites. That night we slept at 
Rennes, where I remember only that I was very 
tired and that a horrid man who came to make 
a fire in our bedrooms spat upon the floor, to our 
disgust and indignation. I remember, too, a very 
pleasant crisp cake, or roll, that maman gave me 
to eat before I went to bed. 

It was on the third day that we drove at last 
into Paris, a fairy-land to my gazing, stupefied 
eyes. What struck me most were the fountains 
of the Place de la Concorde, the bronze mermaids 
holding the spouting fish, and the little sunken 
gardens, four of them, that at that time sur- 
rounded the obelisk. Bon papa lived in the rue 
St. Dominique, St. Germain, and as we drove up 
to the door I remember that it was under blossom- 
ing acacia-trees and that the postilion blew a great 



224 A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY 

blast upon his horn to announce our arrival. The 
house, which was, indeed, a very pleasing speci- 
men of Louis XV architecture, looked palatial to 
my childish eyes. Bon papa was standing, very 
portly, on the terrace to welcome us, and we ran 
into a park behind the house, with an avenue of 
horse-chestnuts and a high fountain. But Brit- 
tany was left far behind, and many, many years 
were to pass before I again saw my Loch-ar-Brugg. 



THE END 



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